Dead Presidents

With millions of Americans fighting overseas during World War II, most newspapers across the United States printed daily lists of American soldiers who had died in battle.  After 12 years as President through the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt died at his post on April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia.  In one of the most fitting tributes to a Commander-in-Chief, the following day’s list of war casualties in many American newspapers included FDR’s name next to his soldiers.

On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who have given their life for their country, let’s also remember our Presidents.  While they may not have all worn the uniform or been killed in battle, eight of our nation’s Commanders-in-Chief — William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy — died in office in the service of their country.

When Gerald Ford was born on July 14, 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska, he was originally named Leslie Lynch King, Jr., after his biological father.  Leslie Sr. was a brutal, physically and emotionally abusive man who had problems with alcohol.  The first time that he beat his wife Dorothy — the future President’s mother — was on their honeymoon in 1912.  Less than a week after Dorothy gave birth to the man who would become the 38th President, a drunken Leslie Sr. grabbed a butcher knife and threatened to kill both Dorothy and Leslie Jr.  The future President was just 16 days old when Dorothy took him out of the dangerous household, fled to Michigan and initiated divorce proceedings.  In 1916, Dorothy married Gerald Ford Sr. and Leslie Jr. was renamed after his adoptive stepfather, a good man who President Ford revered throughout his life.

Jerry Ford met his biological father briefly on only two other occasions.  By that time, Leslie Lynch King Sr. was successful and wealthy, yet he had never made an effort to make amends and get to know the future President.  King had remarried and had three children, but he ignored his firstborn son and never provided any type of child support, even as Dorothy struggled to raise Jerry.  King’s father (Jerry Ford’s grandfather) helped Dorothy out with child support, but Leslie Sr. showed no interest in his eldest son’s life.  It was an experience that forever influenced Jerry Ford’s beliefs.

In January 1949, Gerald Ford took his seat and proudly began representing Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives.  A few months later, Congressman Ford introduced legislation targeting deadbeat dads in order to close up any loopholes which might help absentee parents from having to pay child support, particularly by moving to different states or jurisdictions.  For close to a quarter-century, Ford represented Michigan in Congress and — at the beginning of each of his 13 terms in the House — he introduced similar legislation targeting deadbeat dads or absentee parents trying to avoid child support payments.  This legislation from Ford became known as the “Runaway Pappy bill”.

The scandals of the Nixon/Agnew Administration led to Ford being named Vice President in 1973 to replace the disgraced Agnew, and then succeeding to the Presidency in August 1974 upon Nixon’s resignation.  Now that he was working out of the Executive branch, Ford could no longer introduce his Runaway Pappy legislation, but that didn’t slow down his lifelong war with deadbeat dads.  In 1975, President Ford created the Office of Child Support Enforcement which gave the federal government some jurisdiction in delinquent child support cases which had previously been up to the individual states to handle on their own.  While Ford never admitted any personal reasoning behind the Runaway Pappy legislation, longtime doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, William “Fishbait” Miller wrote that he and Ford had both been deserted by their fathers and that Ford’s legislative targeting of deadbeat dads was definitely personal.

Michigan’s John Dingell has spent more time in the U.S. House of Representatives than anyone in history and, if he remains in office until next June, will break the record for longest-serving member of Congress ever (he’s currently in third place behind Robert Byrd and Carl Hayden).

The Democratic Congressman, who will celebrate his 86th birthday in July, is the current Dean of the House.  Dingell’s father, John Dingell, Sr., served in the House from 1933 until his death in September 1955.  The 29-year-old John Jr. succeeded his father in December 1955 and is currently seeking his 30th term in the House.  Let me repeat that: if (or, most likely, when) Dingell is re-elected in November, it will be his THIRTIETH term in Congress!  Between John Dingell, Jr., and his father, the Dingell family has represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives for almost 80 years.

Due to Dingell’s longevity in Washington, it is likely that no living American has met as many Presidents as the Michigan Congressman.  During his nearly 57 years in the House of Representatives, Dingell has met and worked with 11 Presidents in an official capacity: Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  In addition to the Presidents that he has worked, Dingell also had the opportunity to meet several Presidents during his father’s two decades in the House: Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

While there are probably a handful of people in history who met more Presidents than Dingell — John Quincy Adams, for example, is believed to have met every President from George Washington to Andrew Johnson (17 in all) — I would venture to bet that no American alive in 2012 has met 14 Presidents like the Dean of the House of Representatives, John Dingell of Michigan.

“You know Americans are funny birds.  They are always sticking their noses into somebody’s business which isn’t any of theirs…The United States was created by the boys and girls who couldn’t get along at home.  So-called Puritans who weren’t by any manner of means pure came to Mass. to try out their own witch-burning theories…Most every colony on the East Coast was founded for about the same reason by folks who couldn’t get along at home.  But by all amalgamation we’ve made a very good country and a great nation with a reasonably good government.  I want to maintain it and shall do all I can in spite of the hyphenates and crackpots.  I’ve no more use for Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans, Swedish-Americans or any other sort of hyphenate than I have for Communist-Americans.  They all have some other loyalty than the one they should have.  Maybe the old melting pot will take care of it.  I hope so.”  — Harry Truman, personal diary entry, June 7, 1945

Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend and our parents often inspire us to be the best we can be.  Parents believe we can achieve anything we set our minds to — even becoming President of the United States if that is our ultimate goal.  For a select group of Presidents, they were fortunate enough to to have their parents witness them reach the highest office in the nation:

Fourteen Presidential mothers were still alive when their sons took the oath of office:
•George Washington (inaugurated April 30, 1789; his mother died August 25, 1789)
•John Adams (inaugurated March 4, 1797; his mother died April 17, 1797)
•James Madison (inaugurated March 4, 1809; his mother died February 11, 1829)
•James K. Polk (inaugurated March 4, 1845; his mother died January 11, 1852)
•Ulysses S. Grant (inaugurated March 4, 1869; his mother died May 11, 1883)
•James Garfield (inaugurated March 4, 1881; his mother died January 21, 1888)
•William McKinley (inaugurated March 4, 1897; his mother died December 12, 1897)
•Franklin D. Roosevelt (inaugurated March 4, 1933; his mother died September 7, 1941)
•Harry Truman (inaugurated April 12, 1945; his mother died July 26, 1947)
•John F. Kennedy (inaugurated January 20, 1961; his mother died January 22, 1995)
•Jimmy Carter (inaugurated January 20, 1977; his mother died October 30, 1983)
•George H.W. Bush (inaugurated January 20, 1989; his mother died November 19, 1992)
•Bill Clinton (inaugurated January 20, 1993; his mother died January 6, 1994)
•George W. Bush (inaugurated January 20, 2001; his mother is still living)

The mothers of James Madison, James K. Polk, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush all lived through the entire Presidencies of their sons. 

The three shortest-lived Presidents — James K. Polk (died at age 53), James Garfield (died at age 49), and John F. Kennedy (died at 46) — were the only Presidents survived by their mothers.  Only two Presidents — Warren G. Harding and Kennedy — were survived by their fathers, and JFK is the only President who was outlived by both of his parents.

As for fathers, seven of the Presidents’ dads lived to see their songs inaugurated:
•John Quincy Adams (inaugurated March 4, 1825; his father died July 4, 1826)
•Millard Fillmore (assumed office upon Taylor’s death on July 9, 1850; his father died May 28, 1863)
•Ulysses S. Grant (inaugurated March 4, 1869; his father died June 29, 1873)
•Warren G. Harding (inaugurated March 4, 1921; his father died November 19, 1928)
•Calvin Coolidge (assumed office and actually sworn in by his father upon Harding’s death August 2, 1923; his father died March 18, 1926)
•John F. Kennedy (inaugurated January 20, 1961; his father died November 18, 1969)
•George W. Bush (inaugurated January 20, 2001; his father is still living)

Ulysses S. Grant, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush are the only Presidents who had both their mother and father still living at the time of their inauguration.  Neither of Grant’s parents attended his inauguration, however.  Grant’s father eventually visited his son on several occasions before he died a few months into President Grant’s second term.  Grant’s mother lived through both of his terms but she never visited her son in the White House.  JFK was the first President to have both of his parents present at his inauguration and paid a subtle tribute to his dad during the inaugural parade.  As his motorcade slowly passed the reviewing stand where his family was sitting, JFK stood in up in his open car, tipped his hat and bowed towards his father, who had been working for decades to pave the way for one of his sons to become the first Irish-American/Roman Catholic President. 

In 2001, George W. Bush joined John Quincy Adams as the only son of a President to become President himself.  When JQA was inaugurated in 1825, his 89-year-old father was too frail to make the treacherous trip from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. for the ceremonies and his mother, Abigail, had passed away in 1818.  Bush’s father, however, had left office just eight years earlier and kept himself sharp by skydiving several times.  The 41st President and former First Lady, Barbara Bush, watched their son become the 43rd President, and four years later, they watched as he did what they father couldn’t — take the oath of office for a second term.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity
Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
Hardcover.  641 pp.
April 17, 2012.  Simon & Schuster.

It would not be a stretch if someone said that I have an affinity for the Presidents of the United States.  Anyone who has read any of my book reviews or even looked at the archive of my past articles here in AND Magazine probably came to that conclusion without much difficulty.  Since childhood, I have been fascinated with the Presidents and the Presidency itself.  I’ve studied it deeply, continue studying it daily, often write about it in the pages of AND, and have made it the focus of my Tumblr site, Dead Presidents, where I constantly produce content ranging from random facts incorporated in brief stories to feature-length essays, as well humorous parodies, coverage of current Presidential politics, and question-and-answer sessions with readers, fans, and dissenters.  As a little kid, the Presidents were a hobby to me; now, at 32 years old, my business card says “Presidential Historian” and I’m able to devote all of my time to my passion, which is now my profession.

The reason that I am explaining this is because I frequently come across books that rehash what I already know about the Presidents or the Presidency.  I have hundreds of books about the Presidents in my personal library that I have already read, so it is inevitable that I will pick up a new book from time-to-time and feel like there is nothing else that I can learn.  If I have read 25 books about Abraham Lincoln or Lyndon Johnson, what am I going to get from the 26th book?  I’ve had friends half-jokingly tell me that I’m crazy and wonder why I read multiple books about the same subjects as if history might change.

Those who don’t love history and imagine that every history book must be written like a textbook overlook an important fact:  at its core, history is a form of storytelling.  The appeal is that the stories being told involve actual people, familiar places, and true events.  There are heroes and villains, rewards and consequences, and the stories either affect us directly or become a part of the foundation which structures our world’s social architecture.  Even if I’ve read two dozen books about a single subject or a specific person, a good storyteller can convince me to meet that person or experience that subject once again.  Details emerge, new information is discovered, blank places are filled in, and the story is augmented and reinforced by the best of our historians.  Maybe the solid, unassailable facts of history don’t change, but our interpretation of history is constantly evolving, shaped by the context of our times, our understanding of the past, and our hopes for the future. 

History is not one thing; history is everything.

If we are lucky, a spotlight will shine on a familiar aspect of history and help tell a story from a different perspective.  With a subject as vast as the Presidents or Presidency — a group of men and an institution which has been under the microscope for nearly 225 years — many of the best contemporary books sharpen the focus and illuminate something more specific.  These books are immensely helpful to people like me because the office of President is complex and far-reaching.  By breaking down the subject in smaller, more detailed fragments, it becomes easier to fully understand the job, its importance, and the people who have held that office.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (Simon & Schuster, 2012) by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy does far more than break down the Presidency, focus on a specific component, or reinforce what is already known.  Instead, Gibbs and Duffy — both editors at TIME magazine who collaborated on The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham (BOOK•KINDLE) in the White House, a New York Times best-seller in 2007 — reveal the relatively quiet, yet immensely important relationship that incumbent Presidents have with their predecessors.

In 2004, author Bob Greene likened that relationship between American Presidents as a “fraternity”.  In his book, Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents, Greene wrote about his visits with four ex-Presidents (the fifth, Ronald Reagan, was ill with Alzheimer’s disease) and one of the most intriguing aspects were their comments about each other.  Greene’s book looks at the Presidents he interviewed (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush) on a personal level.  Gibbs and Duffy also examine the personal relationships of Presidents, but The Presidents Club goes even deeper to also define the unique role a former President can play, and the advantages and obstacles that an incumbent President faces because of their predecessors.

Because our Presidents are such monumental figures, there is often a rush to dehumanize them, as if the ambition required to seek the office disqualifies them from having feelings or deserving our respect.  Since tens of millions of people wanted a different President in the first place, the incumbent fights an uphill battle from the moment the votes are counted.  It seems that today’s sensational political atmosphere and need for instant gratification means that the American people, particularly the opposition, have even less patience for our President and no tolerance for weakness or indecision.

John Steinbeck described the struggle for a President in his 1966 book, American and Americans:

“The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else.  We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day.  A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment — social, political, or ethical — can raise a storm of protest.  We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear.  We abuse him often and rarely praise him.  We wear him out, use him up, eat him up.  And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours and we exercise the right to destroy him.”

Throughout Presidential campaigns the candidates claim that they are the most qualified and best equipped American to be elected to the office.  They run down their opponents and raise questions about who has the best experience and who is most ready to assume the Presidency.  In The Presidents Club, time-and-time again, all Presidents quickly recognize that there is no training that qualifies you to be President of the United States.  There is no experience that replicates the job.  No college courses, no corporate apprenticeship, no political position prepares a person for the heavy burdens, massive responsibilities, and lightning quick pace of the Presidency.  The only people who understand the gravity of the President’s duties and decisions are former Presidents. 

Gibbs and Duffy begin The Presidents Club with two men who crossed party lines to establish a relationship, solve some problems in the world, and begin to define how former Presidents can continue to serve their country and help their successors.  Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945, the new President, Harry Truman, invited FDR’s immediate predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to the White House.  FDR had defeated Hoover in the 1932 election and because Hoover and the Great Depression were practically synonymous, Roosevelt saw Hoover as radioactive.  Although Roosevelt served an unprecedented 12 years in office, Hoover was persona non grata, even as the country moved towards war and aides close to FDR suggested making Hoover — immensely popular in Europe due to his famine relief work during the First World War - useful.  Roosevelt steadfastly refused, saying at one point, “I’m not Jesus Christ.  I’m not raising him from the dead.”

FDR’s death propelled Truman into the White House in the midst of World War II, as Allied troops raced towards Berlin and battles raged in the Pacific.  As Vice President, Truman was kept out of the loop on just about everything and the sheer scope of the Presidency was overwhelming.  While FDR ignored Herbert Hoover’s existence, Harry Truman quickly recognized the value of the perspective that only Hoover could provide.  For the remainder of Truman’s Presidency, Hoover and Truman maintained a solid friendship and a fruitful professional partnership.  Despite their political differences, Truman chose Hoover to lead a commission which helped streamline the government and, in the process, strengthen the Executive Branch.  The relationship between the two Presidents — one a Democrat and the other a Republican — really set the stage for what the “Presidents Club” would become.

The Presidents Club continues with Gibbs and Duffy looking at other important partnerships between Presidents and their predecessors in the last half of the 20th Century up until today.  The partnerships aren’t always perfect and some of the relationships are complicated, but that’s to be expected between men of different political and social backgrounds who are ambitious enough to strive to hold the most powerful position in the world, sometimes at the cost of their immediate predecessor.  Truman and Eisenhower had a particularly difficult relationship, but in old age and in the wake of a tragedy they mended their troubles after sharing a ride from the funeral of the assassinated President Kennedy.

Through The Presidents Club runs a common thread, no matter what party the President belongs to or how disappointed they might be in a successor’s policy or personality: a deep interest in protecting the office of the Presidency and a sincere wish to see the incumbent President succeed.  Once a man has been President it seems as if his perception of politics changes.  Rarely do former Presidents openly criticize the incumbent President and the reason why is one that Gibbs and Duffy find many Presidents in agreement about.  Nobody, including former Presidents, sees the same information that the current President sees and that means that nobody understands what goes into making his decisions and what the ramifications might be except for the incumbent President who sits in every meeting, receives every briefing, and sees all of the available intelligence or information.  No matter what they might think of the current President, The Presidents Club makes it clear that former Presidents are ready to serve, answer questions, advise, and support, but not criticize or second-guess. 

To me, that’s the most remarkable part of The Presidents Club.  The former Presidents that Gibbs and Duffy spoke to were adamant about their sincerity when it comes to letting the incumbent President do his job.  Former Presidents talk about how any criticism from an ex-President to the current President is unfair and could be potentially damaging or confusing to our enemies overseas.  And, of course, the former Presidents consistently return to the idea that criticizing the current President’s decision-making is borderline ignorant since nobody sees the same information that the President sees and understands the full picture.  Anyone who has served as President seems to realize at some point — perhaps in retirement as they withdraw from the scene, extract themselves from the White House bubble, and view everything from a different perspective — that, as George W. Bush said, “the office transcends the individual.”

The Presidents Club is a tremendous read and would be if it only focused on the unique professional relationships of Presidents and their predecessors.  Fortunately for us, there are also scores of fascinating stories and anecdotes that illuminate the personal relationships that these very famous, very ambitious, very accomplished men share with each other.  Gibbs and Duffy look at every President since Harry Truman and the human component to these relationships is captivating because of the complex personalities and colossal egos sometimes involved. 

There is the partnership between Truman and Hoover that established the unique fraternity, and the bitter feud between Truman and Eisenhower.  John F. Kennedy’s youth and the tension in the world at the time require one of the youngest Presidents to rely on the advice of one of the oldest.  Lyndon Johnson takes office when JFK is assassinated and never hesitates to show Eisenhower and Truman how much he respects them, how badly he needs them, and how often he’ll call the aging ex-Presidents.  Nixon and LBJ have a complicated relationship fraught with distrust, but also with a mutual respect (and fear) for one another’s political abilities.  Nixon also has a great love for Eisenhower, but when Nixon’s Presidency begins falling apart, he has no one to turn to because Truman, Ike, and LBJ are dead. 

One month after Nixon’s resigns, Gerald Ford pardons him, and the book shares the long, close relationship between the two men.  Ronald Reagan pops up first as a potential challenger to Nixon in 1968, then as a dangerous challenger to Ford in 1976.  Gibbs and Duffy do their best to explain the tense and somewhat strange Ford/Reagan relationship, beginning with Reagan’s challenge of Ford in ‘76 and continuing up to the point where Reagan nearly chose former President Ford as his running mate in 1980.  Carter beats Ford in 1976 and loses to Reagan in 1980, beginning what will likely end up being the longest, most accomplished “retirements” of any President in American History.

President Reagan sets the stage for perhaps the most compelling story in The Presidents Club after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated in 1981 when Reagan asks Nixon, Ford, and Carter to represent him at the funeral.  The former Presidents agree and all travel together in an awkward flight on a plane usually in service as Air Force One despite strained relationships between all three of them, particularly Ford and Carter.  After the funeral, Nixon continues traveling in the Middle East while Ford and Carter use the 16-hour flight back to the United States to put their troubles behind them, find some common interests, and begin a friendship that was sealed with a promise: whoever lived longer would deliver the eulogy at the other’s funeral (Carter ended up eulogizing Ford in January 2007).

Finally, with the more recent Presidents, Gibbs and Duffy show how personal the human side of the Presidency can get.  Reagan’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease means that his successors must do without his advice as he vanishes from the scene to face his illness and his influential voice is silenced.  George H.W. Bush sees the end of the Cold War and successfully launches the Persian Gulf War but his high approval ratings drop along with the economy and he’s defeated by Bill Clinton.  When Clinton takes office, he has five former Presidents still alive to counsel him, and he surprisingly turns to Nixon for advice.  Clinton’s own scandals lead Ford and Carter to step in — not to defend Clinton’s actions, but to protect the institution of the Presidency.  After Clinton leaves office, he and the man he defeated in 1992, George H.W. Bush, build a remarkable friendship that is almost familial, one that Clinton sometimes looks at like the father he never had.  Together, they raise millions of dollars for disaster relief and heal any wounds from 1992 with a devotion to each other.  Of course, by that time, Bush’s actual son was President which doubles the protective feeling the elder Bush has toward the Presidency. 

Shortly before Barack Obama joined The Presidents Club in 2009 all of the living Presidents had breakfast at the White House with the President-elect, and George W. Bush made it clear that the unofficial fraternity really was a collective, telling Obama, “We want you to succeed.”  While Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney, has criticized Obama at every turn and many of Bush’s fellow Republicans have openly admitted their hope that Obama fails, Bush has comfortably and quietly settled into retirement, as well as adhering to the traditional standards of The Presidents Club.  “I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said after Obama’s inauguration, “I think it is essential that Obama be helped in the office.”

There are few books that are able to detail both the historic and institutional aspects of the Presidency as well as the deeply personal elements that define the Presidents themselves.  The Presidents Club is a book about history, politics, rivalry, friendship, and family.  Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy have intensely researched the last 80 years of the Presidency in order to deliver one of the most absorbing books that I have read in a long time.  We love riveting, touching stories about the interactions and relationships of people and Americans are always eager to learn more about the personal lives and human sides of our leaders.  The Presidents Club is a rare convergence of both.  As I said earlier, the best history is stories about people and The Presidents Club is a story about how the most powerful people in the world lived and worked with one another.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy is available now from Simon & Schuster.  You can order it from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Nancy Gibbs is the deputy managing editor of TIME magazine and Michael Duffy is TIME’s executive editor.  They previously collaborated on The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House.

If you want to be President, it is helpful if you are the oldest son in your family.  Of the 43 men who have been President of the United States, 22 of them were the oldest sons: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  Only two Presidents — William Henry Harrison and James Garfield — were the youngest children in their families (three if you count Confederate President Jefferson Davis).

No President has been an only child, although Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama had no full siblings.  Those four Presidents  were the only children from the marriage of their parents, but they each had half-siblings from the other marriages of their parents.

Stephen Foster was perhaps the most-celebrated American songwriter of the 19th Century.  Foster composed familiar favorites like “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Beautiful Dreamer”, “Camptown Races”, “Swanee River”, “Oh! Susanna”, and countless others.  In 1856, the composer penned the Presidential campaign song for his fellow Pennsylvanian, James Buchanan.  Besides both hailing from the Keystone State, Buchanan’s brother, Edward, was married to Foster’s sister, Ann Eliza.

Fittingly, Foster was also born on a day steeped in Presidential (and American) History.  Not only was the composer’s birthday the Fourth of July, but he happened to be born on July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the exact same day that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died just a few hours apart in one of history’s most remarkable coincidences.

The capitals of four states are named after Presidents: Mississippi (Andrew Jackson), Missouri (Thomas Jefferson), Nebraska (Abraham Lincoln), and Wisconsin (James Madison). 

While the capitals of Mississippi, Missouri, and Wisconsin were meant to be tributes, Nebraska was a different story.  Lincoln, Nebraska was originally named Lancaster, and the capital of the Nebraska Territory was originally the much-larger city of Omaha.  However, the majority of the territory’s population lived south of the Platte River and when that part of the territory considered joining up with Kansas, there was a move to make Lancaster the capital as Nebraska moved toward statehood after the Civil War.  Business interests in Omaha wanted their city to remain the capital, but didn’t want to lose the territory south of the Platte to Kansas. 

Since there was a large population of Confederate sympathizers in Nebraska, Omaha went along with making Lancaster the capital, but suggested changing the city’s name to “Lincoln”.  The plan hatched in Omaha was that the many Nebraskans with Southern ties would never agree to making a town named after Abraham Lincoln their new state capital.  Lincoln’s assassination, however, made him a popular and sympathetic figure throughout the country, so Lancaster became Lincoln, and Nebraskans had no problem with making the city the state capital when it joined the Union in 1867.

Besides the four state capitals, there are also two national capital cities named after American Presidents.  Of course, one of them is our own nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  The other is the capital of Liberia, where many former slaves resettled under the auspices of the American Colonization Society.  In honor of one of the biggest supporters of the colonization of Liberia by former American slaves, the country’s capital was named Monrovia in 1822 for President James Monroe.

In 1978, the Roman Catholic Church experienced the most recent occurrence of a rather rare phenomenon in its history:  the Year of Three Popes.  On August 6th, Pope Paul VI died following a 15-year reign.  Less than three weeks later, Pope John Paul I was elected to succeed him, but the new Pope suddenly died on September 28th, just thirty-three days into his Papacy.  Pope John Paul II became 1978’s third Pope on October 16th and brought some stability to the Vatican, reigning longer than all but one other pontiff in the 2,000-year history of the Church.  While 1978’s Year of Three Popes was the 12th time the Catholic Church had three pontiffs reigning in one calendar year, it was the first time since 1605.

During that period, however, the United States experienced a similar event — the Year of Three Presidents.  Twice.

After losing his bid for reelection, President Martin Van Buren began 1841 as a lame duck and handed the reins of the government over to William Henry Harrison on March 4, 1841.  Exactly one month later, the 68-year-old Harrison became the first U.S. President to die in office.  John Tyler assumed the office on April 4, 1841 and served until 1845.

When President Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the disputed election of 1876 by a special commission, he pledged to serve just one term.  Staying true to his promise, Hayes was replaced by fellow Ohio Republican James Garfield on March 4, 1881.  But on July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a disgruntled office seeker in a Washington train depot.  The 49-year-old President lingered for 79 excruciating days before dying in a home he had been moved to on the Jersey Shore.  The third President of 1881 was Chester Alan Arthur, who completed Garfield’s term and left the White House in 1885.

Yet, an even rarer occurrence that likely (and hopefully) won’t be matched by future leaders took place in 1276, as the Catholic Church saw a Year of Four Popes:  Gregory X, Innocent V, Adrian V, and John XXI.

Happy 190th Birthday to Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and the victorious commanding General of the Union Army during the Civil War.  Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio.  When Grant was appointed to West Point, he found out that the Ohio Congressman who had helped him get into the United States Military Academy gave the name “Ulysses Simpson Grant” (Simpson was Grant’s mother’s maiden name) instead of “Hiram Ulysses Grant”.  Since Grant thought the initials “U.S.G.” would look a lot better than “H.U.G.” on his equipment, he kept the name, although most of his close friends called him “Sam”.

Had PETA been around in the 19th Century, General Grant might have been their poster boy.  Grant loved animals, especially horses.  His father owned a tannery, and that may have been the reason that Grant hated the sight of animal blood (rare steak literally made him sick to his stomach), despised hunting, and wouldn’t eat chicken or turkey or “anything that went on two legs”. 

In 1864, Grant’s love for animals was clearly displayed to his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, who also served as personal secretary to President Grant in the White House.  Grant and a few of his staff officers were riding between camps in Virginia when they saw a man beating his horse in the face and head.  General Grant immediately jumped off of his own horse, grabbed the man, and started choking him.  Before leaving, Grant ordered that the man be tied to a fence, where he remained for the next six hours.  Porter said it was the only time he personally recalled Grant losing his temper during the Civil War.