Post Scripts: More Presidential Anecdotes

Do you remember that Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837? I didn’t remember until I read it in a book I own, Presidential Anecdotes. He got off to an exciting start when thousands of Jackson enthusiasts poured into the nation’s capital to see him inaugurated March 4, 1829. People came from as far as 500 miles to see a Revolutionary War hero, General Jackson. They seemed to think he could rescue them from some awful danger.

General Jackson’s inaugural address was mild enough but when he finished the crowd went crazy. People swarmed past police to get to the Capitol steps to shake his hand. The inaugural reception was a brawl. People poured into the White House through windows as well as doors, upset waiters carrying trays of food, broke china and glassware, overturned tables, spilled whiskey and chicken, and squirted tobacco juice on the carpet. They stood with muddy boots on the damask-covered chairs in order to get a good look at "Old Hickory."

Andrew Jackson was known for his fights during his early lifetime, but when he because president, his shoot-outs were over but his presidency was a stormy eight years both in federal and foreign affairs. His supporters applauded his forthrightness, fearlessness and generosity. His enemies thought he was reckless, intolerant, strong-headed and dictatorial. But everyone agreed on one thing – that when Jackson made up his mind to do something he did it regardless of opposition. Before he died, someone ask one of his slaves if he thought his master would go to heaven. "If General Jackson takes it into his head to git to heaven," he exclaimed, "who’s gwine to keep him out?"

Lots of interesting things are told about Jackson, but I must go on to Martin Van Buren, the eighth president from 1837 to 1841. While the electoral votes were being counted in the presence of two Houses of Congress, Senator Henry Clay remarked to Vice President Martin Van Buren: "It is a cloudy day sir." Van Buren replied: "The sun will shine on the fourth of March, sir." He was right. On inaugural morning, March 4, 1837, the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But Van Buren, handpicked by Jackson to succeed him, was completely overshadowed by his predecessor. People listened respectfully to Van Buren’s inaugural address, but when they caught sight of Jackson afterward, they gave him a tremendous ovation. "For once," remarked Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, "the rising sun was eclipsed by the setting sun."

Van Buren was never a popular leader like Jackson. In New York, where he rose to political prominence, and in Washington afterward, he was primarily a party organizer, political strategist, a manipulator of men and skilled wheeler-dealer, not a charismatic public figure like Old Hickory. His White House years were unhappy. He had not been in office long when the "Panic of 1839" struck the nation’s banks and produced a long and painful depression. When he ran for a second term his enemies sneeringly quoted the boasts he made at his inaugural address and also accused him of living in luxury at the White House while people went hungry. He was defeated in 1839 by a member of the new Whig Party, William Henry Harrison. He ran again unsuccessfully in 1844 but was defeated and settled down to farming and writing his memoirs.

When the Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison for president in 1839, Thomas Hart Benton, Democratic Senator from Missouri, said "availability was the only ability sought by the Whig party." The Baltimore Republican newspaper was even more derisive."Give him a barrel of hard cider and a pension of $2,000 a year and he will sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin." The Whigs quickly transformed the slur into an asset and launched one of the most colorful campaigns in American history: "The log cabin, hard cider campaign of 1840."

Harrison was an unlikely log cabin candidate. The son of a wealthy Virginia planter, he had gone to college, enlisted in the army, became a major-general. He fought the battle of Tippecanoe against the Indians of the Northwest and also fought in the War of 1812. He served as a congressman and senator from Ohio after he left the army. But the Whigs presented him as having been born in a log cabin and worked his way up to a high distinction. Choosing John Tyler of Virginia as his running mate, their campaign slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too."

Harrison won the election with more people voting than ever before. His wife complained. "I wish that my husband’s friends had left him where he was, happy and contented in retirement." But Harrison looked forward to the White House and expected to do wonderful things. He wrote his own inaugural address but the day before the inauguration he allowed Daniel Webster to look it over. He discovered it was mostly Roman history and had nothing to do with American affairs. So Webster spent the day trying to Americanize the speech.

Despite Webster’s work, Harrison’s inaugural address on March 4, 1841, took the 68 year old general close to two hours to deliver it. It was a cold wintry day and Harrison stood bareheaded and without gloves or overcoat as he droned on and on. Later that month he contracted a chill that quickly became pneumonia, and on April 4 the ninth president died.