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Introduction
Today is the Presidents' Day in the United States, a public holiday for most people.
Washington's birthday (22 Feb) was first observed in 1782, and Lincoln's birthday (12 Feb) became a federal holiday in 1892. Presidents' day combines these two into a single holiday, and was designated a holiday in the mid-1970s by Congress to honor all past US presidents. However, in many states, the holiday continues to be known simply as George Washington's Birthday.
Today, I reflect on several American presidents.
From 1978 to 2001
I arrived in this country December 31, 1978, smack in the middle of the Carter presidency. Before him, of course, I had heard of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson, of Nixon and Ford. But since Carter, I have now lived in the United States as a non-citizen under Reagan and Bush I, under Clinton (voting for him once) and now Bush II.
I may not always have loved the presidents - I loved Carter and Clinton, was always entertained by Reagan and was/am reasonably indifferent to the Bushes - but I am fascinated with the American presidency, the awesome power that it has, the feeling of power that the president must sense, and yet the ABSOLUTE confidence that he has some of the most competent people from all parts of the Earth to bear his awesome burden with him.
So today I reflect not so much on the presidency, but on several of the presidents.
Although I will use the help of a book that I have been thumbing through, let me begin with some of my own thumb-nail sketches of those presidents that I have lived under:
- From Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) - the 39th President:
I learnt the power of faith and prayer, and of intelligence - and a strong woman (Rosalynn Smith) as wife and soulmate in your excercise of power. It must have been a terrible thing to be a Christian and president of the United States!
"If the misery of others leaves you indifferent and with no feeling of sorrow, then you cannot be called a human being."
Jimmy Carter, Memoirs, 1982
"Jimmy Carter was the smartest public official I've ever known. The range and extent of his knowledge were astonishing."
Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill
- From Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) - the 40th President:
I learnt the power of humor, and good-heartedness and not to take yourself too seriously. [He once remarked that his first degree from college was as "honorary" as the Honoris Causa degree he was been granted at the same college!] Again, an adoring wife (Nancy Davis) is a big (political) help.
"Appalled by what seems to me a lack of depth, I stand in awe nevertheless of his political skill."
Speaker of the House Jim Wright
"Yet questions linger as to which Reagan was the "real one": the ideologue or the pragmatist? the great man or the dunce?"
- From George H.W. Bush (1989-1993), - the 41st President:
preparation for the job, and just basic decency.
"When George Bush became president, his immediate predecessors had been a peanut farmer and an actor. Bush, however, was unmistakably a member of the country's ruling class."
"I've always felt if there's one thing you could count on George Bush for, it's decency and fairness"
Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young
"I'm a conservative, but I'm not a nut about it"
George Bush
- From Clinton (1993-2001) - the 42nd President:
I learnt the power of awesome intelligence, a (somewhat) tolerant wife (Hillary Rodham, now Senator Clinton), staying on the message and understanding that not all people will like you, no matter how hard you try, and that EVEN your enemies, if they don't come around to loving you,
will still respect you and the results you get. I also learnt of "the common sense of voters that disapproved of Clinton's character, but didn't want him removed from office", that if you do something right for people, they will stick by you through thick and thin, even if they cudgel you behind closed doors.
"He cared deeply about where he came from, which was unusual. He was rooted, and most of us were disconnected."
wife Hillary Rodham Clinton
"I refuse to be part of a generation that celebrates the death of communism abroad with the loss of the American Dream at home."
Clinton Speech, 1992
- George W. Bush (2001 - ?) - the 43rd president:
I just hope that I do not learn that:
"He showed that ANYBODY can be president of the USA - and succeed!"
From 1789 - 1864
But besides the presidents named above, there were 38 others.
Here is a short synopsis of the first ten of them - from Washington to Tyler. In this Black History Month in the US, I also include the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, who fought a Civil War that resulted in the emancipation of Black slave folk in 1863.
All eleven of them having lived way before my time, these reflections are my own excerptions, courtesy of the great book
"To the Best of My Ability:
The American Presidents" by James McPherson (General Editor);
Dorling Kindersley, 2000; ISBN 0-7894-5073-9; 728 pages.
Enjoy.
George Washington - Ist President - 1789 - 1797
born February 22, 1732; in Pope's Creek, Virginia;
died December 14, 1799
Married Marth Dandridge; no children
"Even in his maturity, George Washington had an imposing physical presence. At six feet two inches tall with broad, muscular shoulders and large hands, he stood out particularly because Americans were rather smaller in the eighteenth century than they are today."
"There were features in his face totally different from what I had observed in any other human being"
Gilbert Stuart
"His mind... was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion"
Thomas Jefferson
"If I should conceive myself in a manner constrained to accept [the presidency]...this very act would be the greatest sacrifice of my personal feelings and wishes that every I have been called upon to make"
George Washington
John Adams - 2nd President - 1797 - 1801
Born OCtober 30, 1735; in Braintree, Massachusetts;
died July 4, 1826
Married Abigail; 5 children
"John Adams was smart, he knew it, and he couldn't resist letting others know it as well. "Vanity is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly," he wrote in his diary."
"He is vain, irritable and a bad calculator of...the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him."
Thomas Jefferson
"Remember the ladies (when making laws for the new republic.) Do not putunlimited power in the hands of husbands...Remember, all men would betyrants if they could."
Abigail Adams, writing to her husband John
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it."
John Adams, in a letter following the election of his son, 1825
Thomas Jefferson - 3rd President - 1801 - 1809
Born April 13, 1743; in Goochland County, Virginia;
died July 4, 1826 (died same day as 2nd President John Adams)
"Thomas Jefferson was tall, even taller than Washington, but he lacked the general's posture. "He sits in a lounging manner on one hip, commonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other," one senator observed."
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground"
Thomas Jefferson, 1788 letter
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past - so, good night!"
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1816
"Jefferson left specific instructions for his tombstone. The epitaph he wanted (and received) read: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."
"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of human talent (ever) gathered at the White House- with the possible except of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
John F. Kennedy; speech at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners
James Madison - 4th President - 1809-1817
Born March 16, 1751; In Port Conway, Virginia;
Died June 28, 1836;
Married Dolley Payne Todd in 1794; no children
"Few American statesmen have earned so admired a place in the nation's history as the acutely intelligent Virginian remembered as the Father of the Constitution."
"James Madison often gave the impression of being weak, nervous, and young for his age. In part, this was because he was modest, soft spoken, and somewhat shy."
"The great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself"
James Madison in The Federalist No. 51, 1788
"[Madison was around to] witness in 1832 the nullification crisis and hear the argument for disunion made on the basis of his own Virginia Resolutions. Written in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, these resolutions argued that states could properly oppose federal laws if
those laws were unjust."
James Monroe - 5th President - 1817-1825
Born April 28, 1758; in Westmoreland County, Virginia;
Died July 4, 1831
Married Elizabeth; three children
"Standing just over six feet tall, the president had broad shoulders and a large frame."
"He had a wonderful intellectual patience and could...hold [a] subject immovably fixed under his attention until he had mastered...all of its relations."
James C. Calhoun
"I have always considered [the existence of political parties] the curse of the country."
letter by James Monroe
"Despite earning twenty-five thousand dollars a year as president, Monroe left the White House seventy-five thousand dollars in debt. "Mr. Monroe...has received more pecuniary reward from the public than any other man since the existence of the nation, and is now dying, at the age of seventy-two, in wretchedness and beggary"
John Quincy Adams, 1831
John Quincy Adams - 6th President - 1825-1829
Born July 11, 1767; in Braintree, Massaschusetts;
died February 23, 1848
Married to Louisa Johnson; 4 children
"Our perception of American presidents is marked by irony. Although we desire from politics peace and prosperity, we tend to discount those politicians who preside over good times.
Eras of stability and comfort are intrinsically the wrong times for producing great presidents because, without a war or an economic depression or the urgency of a moral cause, politics continue as usual and history remains inert, uneventful, prosaic.
Such was the setting of the administration of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States and son of the second president, John Adams.... After his presidency, Admas played an even greater role in history, fighting as a congressman for the right to bring unpopular
subjects (including slavery) to the floor of the House." He also defended a group of Africans who had seized control in July 1839 of the slave ship Amistad, winning their freedom in trials that went all the way to the Supreme Court."
"Adams used [his] microscope(s) to pursue his lifelong interest in natural history. Among his hobbies was the domestication of wild plants."
"May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right."
JQA's letter to John Adams, 1816
Andrew Jackson - 7th President - 1829-1837
Born March 15, 1767; in Waxhaw, South Carolina;
died June 8, 1845
Married Rachel Donelson; no children
"Most portraits of Andrew Jackson omit the scar on his forehead, the result of a sword slash during the Revolutionary War. For Jackson, however, that scar as a permanent reminder of his hatred for the British."
"For most of his life, Andrew Jackson was an extremely controversial figure - yet ordinary Americans loved him, trusted him, and honored him "before all other living men", according to biographer James Parton...."The people are sovereign," he repeatedly insiste throughout his
administration. "Their will is absolute."......The term "Jacksonian Democrat" was later coined to describe the evolution of this country during the antebellum period from a republic to a popular democracy."
"[The press was unkind to his wife, and she soon] learned that she had become the scuttlebutt of the political press corps. This may or may not have worsened her chronic heart conidition. In any event, she died in December 1828. At her funeral, the president-elect declared, "Those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy.""
"I cannot be intimidated from doing that which my judgement and conscience tells me is right by any earthly power."
Andrew Jackson letter, 1824.
"I have great confidence in the virtue of the great majority of the people, and I cannot fear the result."
Andrew Jackson letter, 1828.
"If General Jackson wants to go to heaven, who's to stop him?"
Anonymous
Martin Van Buren - 8th President - 1837-1841
Born December 5, 1782; in Kinderhook, New York;
died July 24, 1862
Married Hannah Hoes, 4 children
"Short and portly and dandified in dress and manner, Martin Van Buren was no Andy Jackson. Political opponents ridiculed his foppish appearance and charged that he was a backstairs intriguer. Thurlow Weed, Whig boss of New York, like to disparage Van Buren's "non-commitalism", while John Quincy Adams condemned his "fawning civility" to those in power. Van Buren, for his part, though of himself as a man of prudence who preferred "to move step by step."
"[Van Buren] rowed to his objective with muffled oars."
Rep. John Randolph
"[A picture] depicts the dimunitive Van Buren as the Little Magician, a nickname he acquired because of his reputation for political adroitness."
"It would be difficult to say from his personal appearance whether he was man or woman but for his large....whiskers."
Davy Crockett
William Henry Harrison - 9th President - 1841
Born February 9, 1773; in Charles City County, Virginia;
died April 4, 1841
Married Anna Symes Harrison, 10 children
"Even after [Daniel] Webster's pruning, Harrison's speech remained much longer and more learned than most inaugural addresses. The new president was trying to overcome the impression created by his campaign supporters that he was a backwoodsman who drank a lot. The campaign had been perhaps too successful, and Harrison needed a different image now. He wanted to be presidential, to show that he was really a Virginia gentleman in the manner of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison....This desire was never fulfilled. Instead, Harrison, nicknamed Old Tippecanoe, is best rememberd for his military exploits, for winning the election of 1840 with the inovative "log cabin and hard cider" campaign, and for being the first president to die in office. "
"He could not stand the excitement of seventeen million people but died of the presidency in one month."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It was not the election of General Harrison that was expected to produce happy effects, but the measures to be adopted by his administration"
Abraham Lincoln
"I wish that my husband's friends had left him where he is, happy and contented in retirement" - Harrison's wife, after hearing that he had won the presidential election in 1840
John Tyler - 10th President - 1841-1845
Born March 29 1790; in Charles
City County, Virginia;
died January 18, 1862
Married Letitia Christian (8 children) and (after Letitia's death) Julia Gardiner (7 children)
"At his first cabinet meeting, the Harrison appointees who made up the Whig cabinet pressed the idea that Tyler should obtain their consensus before acting. It was a throwback to the "conciliar government" favored by Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. "I am very glad to have in my Cabinet such able statesmen as you, " Tyler replied. "But I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do...I am the President....When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted."
"He looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might, being at war with everybody."
Charles Dickens
"A month before he left office, Tyler threw a huge ball at the White House. As the crowds mobbed the East Room, he remarked, "They cannot say now that I am a president without a party." It was one of the few times Tyler cracked a joke in public...."
Abraham Lincoln - 16th President - 1861-1865
Born February 12, 1809; in Hardin County, Kentucky;
Died April 15, 1865
Married Mary Todd; 4 children
"Six feet four inches tall with a lanky rawboned look and unruly coarse black hair, the youthful Lincoln had a gregarious personality and a penchant for telling humorous stories..."
"Among the constituent elements of Lincoln's complex character was a reflective, almost brooding quality that sometimes descended into serious depression. During one of these bouts with "the hypo", as Lincoln called it, he wrote to a friend, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth."
"He is a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, a gorilla in respect of outward polish, but a most sensible, straight-forward old codger."
Lawyer George Templeton Strong.
"The monstrous injustice of slavery...deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites."
Lincoln speech, 1854.
"On the wet morning of February 11, 1861, one day before his fifty-second birthday, President-elect Abraham Lincoln stood on the rear platform of a special train ready to leave Springfileld, Illinois, for Washington. As he prepared to say good-bye to the crowd of friends and neighbors, his thoughts drifted back over the quarter century he'd lived in Springfield
and forward to his inauguration three weeks later.
"My friends," Lincoln said, "No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness
at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything...Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether every, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested on Washington."
"Lincoln was the only president whose entire tenure was bounded by the parameters of war..."
"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
Abraham Lincoln, Letter 1864
"Major Event: July 21, 1861 - At the first battle of Bull Run, [Southern secessionist] Confederate troops halt a Union advance and counterattack, routing Lincoln's "three-month men." The chaotic Union withdrawal is complicated by the presence of congressmen and other civilians who have ridden from Washington with picnic baskets to watch what they imagine will be an easy Union victory."
"By the latter half of 1862, however, the logic of total war had convinced Lincoln that he must smite the "heart of the rebellion" - slavery. As president in peacetime, he would have no constitutional power of emancipation. But as commander in chief in wartime, he did have the
constitutional right to seize enemy property being used to wage war. Slaves were such property. On September 22, 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation warning that in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, he would use his war powers to declare their slaves "then, thenceforward, and forever free."
January 1 came, and Lincoln fulfilled his promise. As he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he told colleagues who witnessed the act: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history, it
will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it."
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