United States Presidents

17-31

17. Andrew Johnson

• Republican• Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of

the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them.

• After Lincoln's death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons.

• By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but "black codes" to regulate the freedmen were beginning to appear.

• Andrew Johnson had no formal education. His wife taught him reading, writing and math.• Johnson was impeached for removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton during the turbulent Reconstruction Period but was acquitted by one vote in the Senate. • Johnson was buried beneath a willow tree that he planted. His head rests on a copy of the Constitution.

18. Ulysses S. Grant

• Republican• When he was elected, the American people

hoped for an end to turmoil. • Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking

to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. • During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant

was attacked by Liberal Republican reformers. • The General's friends in the Republican Party

came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard."

• • Ulysses S. Grant was the victorious Union commander of the Civil War. He received General Lee’s sword at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.• Grant finished his memoirs in 1885, a few weeks before his death from throat cancer. The book earned over $450,000 for his family after his death.• Ulysses S. Grant established Yellowstone as the nation's first national park on March 1, 1872.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes

• Republican• Hayes insisted that his cabinet appointments must be made on

merit, not political considerations. • For his Cabinet he chose men of high caliber, but outraged many

Republicans because one member was an ex-Confederate and another had bolted the party as a Liberal Republican in 1872.

• Many of the leaders of the new South did indeed favor Republican economic policies and approved of Hayes's financial conservatism, but they faced annihilation at the polls if they were to join the party of Reconstruction.

• Hayes and his Republican successors were persistent in their efforts but could not win over the "solid South."

• While Rutherford B. Hayes was still in the Union Army, Cincinnati Republicans ran him for the House of Representatives. He accepted the nomination, but would not campaign, explaining, "an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer... ought to be scalped."

• To set a good example for the country Rutherford B. Hayes banished liquor and wine from the White House.

• Hayes held the first Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.

20. James A. Garfield• Republican

• As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York

• In foreign affairs, Garfield's Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882, but the conference never took place.

• On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.

• James A. Garfield was the last of seven presidents to be born in a log cabin.

• President-elect Garfield campaigned for the American presidency from the front porch of his house.

• Garfield was the second president to die by assassination. Two months after being sworn into office, Garfield was shot in a Washington railroad station. Doctors repeatedly probed for the bullet with non-sterile instruments and unwashed fingers, the president died 80 days later.

21. Chester A. Arthur

• Republican• Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower

tariff rates so the Government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue.

• The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law.

• Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent.

• Arthur demonstrated as President that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself

• Chester A. Author was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a fatal kidney disease; a year after he succeeded to the presidency. Arthur ran for a second term in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, though he knew the more active he was the greater his chance was of succumbing to the disease. He did not gain his party’s nomination and died in 1886.

• Nicknamed "Elegant Arthur" because of his fashion sense.

• Arthur is credited with saying, "I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s business."

22.Grover Cleveland

• Democrat• The First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover

Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

• In December 1887 he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs.

• Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced an acute depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment.

• Grover Cleveland personally answered the White House phone.

• Cleveland was the only president married in a ceremony at the White House, June 2, 1886.

• President Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886.

23. Benjamin Harrison

• Republican• The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the

tariff issue. • The high tariff rates in effect had created a surplus of money in

the Treasury. • Low-tariff advocates argued that the surplus was hurting business. • Harrison tried to make the tariff more acceptable by writing in

reciprocity provisions. • To cope with the Treasury surplus, the tariff was removed from

imported raw sugar; sugar growers within the United States were given two cents a pound bounty on their production.

• Benjamin Harrison was the only president to be a grandson of a president (William Henry Harrison) and great-grandson to a signer of the Declaration of Independence (Benjamin Harrison).

• Harrison made 140 completely different speeches in 30 days.

• Benjamin Harrison was the first president to use electricity in the White House. After he got an electrical shock, his family often refused to touch the light switches and sometimes would go to bed with the lights on.

24.Grover Cleveland

25. William McKinley

• Republican• Not prosperity, but foreign policy, dominated McKinley's Administration. • Reporting the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in

Cuba, newspapers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffering acutely.

• Public indignation brought pressure upon the President for war. • Unable to restrain Congress or the American people, McKinley delivered

his message of neutral intervention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba.

• In the 100-day war, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico.

• First president to ride in an automobile.

• First president to campaign by telephone.

• The third president to die from an assassin’s wound. He was shot during the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. He died of his wounds about a week later.

26. Theodore Roosevelt

• Republican• With the assassination of President McKinley,

Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation's history.

• Some of Theodore Roosevelt's most effective achievements were in conservation. He added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and fostered great irrigation projects.

• Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to call his residence in Washington, D.C. the "White House". Prior to his term, it had been called the Executive Mansion or the President’s House.• Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the prize in 1906 for his role as peacemaker in the Russo-Japanese War.• The name "Teddy" bears for stuffed animals was coined in 1903 when a stuffed toy bear was given to the noted outdoorsman Roosevelt.

27. William Howard Taft

• Republican• Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the

intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration

• Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor.

• Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers

• William Taft was the first president to own a car. • Taft is the only president to also serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930).• First of two presidents to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. John F. Kennedy is the other.

28. Woodrow Wilson

• Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people.

• developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order.

• In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy.“

• Woodrow Wilson was the first president to have earned a Ph.D. He received a degree in political science in 1886.• During his presidency a flock of sheep was raised on the White House lawn. The wool was used to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I.• The only president buried in Washington, D.C. Wilson is interred at the Washington National Cathedral.

29. Warren G. Harding

• By 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and newspapers hailed Harding as a wise statesman carrying out his campaign promise--"Less government in business and more business in government."

• Behind the facade, not all of Harding's Administration was so impressive.

• Word began to reach the President that some of his friends were using their official positions for their own enrichment.

• Alarmed, he complained, "My...friends...they're the ones that keep me walking the floors nights!"

• Warren Harding was the first president to speak over the radio.• Harding was the first newspaper publisher to be elected into the presidency.• Harding had the largest feet of any president. He wore size 14 shoes.

30. Calvin Coolidge

• At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President.

• By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.

• Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of Presidents, and the most accessible.

• He rapidly became popular. In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as "Coolidge prosperity," he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote.

• Coolidge lighted the first national Christmas tree in 1923 on the White House lawn.• Coolidge refused to use the telephone while in office.• A man of few words, a dinner guest made a bet that she could get him to say more than two words. When she told the president of her wager, he replied, "You lose."

31. Herbert C. Hoover

• After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928.

• He said then: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land."

• His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

• After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending.

• Herbert Hoover was the first president born west of the Mississippi River.

• Hoover approved "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem.

• Donated his salary to charity.