Presidents Day 101

Happy Belated Presidents’ Day! I hope many of you had this holiday off but were not like I recovering from a terrible head cold—phlegm, snot, sneezing and sounding like Marge Simpson’s tsking Homer in her way. Misery loves company so I passed it on to J., who seems to have it worse than I did. Anyway, we have Congress to thank for President’s Day. Curious about the origins of this federal holiday as much as I am? To confuse us all, Presidents’ Day isn’t the federally given name for the holiday. It is actually suppose to be Washington Birthday Day. Congress passed in 1968 the Monday Holidays Act, which moved the official observance of George Washington’s Birthday from February 22nd—which according to the Gregorian calendar is his birthday, but more on this later, to the third Monday in February. George Washington’s Birthday has been celebrated since the 18th century as well as during his lifetime. President Chester Arthur signed a bill in 1885 making it a federal holiday.

It also happens that Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is on February 12th. Lincoln’s birthday never became a federal holiday, but became a legal holiday celebrated in many states with the exception of those that were part of the confederacy. After the 1968 passage of the Monday Holidays Act, many reformers wanted to change the name to Presidents’ Day—given that the third Monday of February always falls after Lincoln’s birthday and after Washington’s. Some states which celebrated both president’s birthday prior to the passage, proceeded to drop one of the holidays in lieu of having both president’s honored on one day. Thus the misnomer that it’s Presidents’ Day leading to the mistake that I made not too long ago that it was a celebration of all presidents. You could pick your favorite president and honor him in your own way. Like finding out interesting anecdotes such as when George Washington was born in 1731, Britain was using the Julian calendar. In 1752 they changed to the Gregorian calendar, jumping ahead 11 days and making January the first month of the year versus March. George Washington’s original birthdate was February 11th.

From elementary school on, we are taught much about the laurels and accomplishments of our 1st and 16th presidents—one the father of our country and as some would say, the other the savior of our country, but many of the other 43 are forgotten. Of course the twentieth century presidents have been dissected, analyzed and interpreted several times over—even President William McKinley, the first president of the twentieth century, who was also assassinated in office has, according to a search on amazon.com, nine books that were written on his three-year presidency. We know more about them then many of their predecessors. Try and name as many of the 43 you can, and I can guarantee, that unless you memorized all of their names as child in grade school or for some perverse pleasure of your own, such as it will come in handy if your find yourself on Jeopardy some day, you can name about five to six between Washington and Lincoln, and about three between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Though there are those nine books published about McKinley, unless you are really into presidential history or have seen Sondheim’s Assassins several times, most likely you will not remember that McKinley was a president from 1897-1901. As long as there is a longing amongst the population for knowing the stories of great men who lead the nation through rocky times and put the country on a path towards a better future, there will always be a niche for biographies on Washington and Lincoln and they will be taught in classrooms. First essays will be written about them and as will the myth that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and when confronted by his father told that he could not lie, that he had indeed chopped down that tree. I say we should take Presidents’ Day to remember both the minor and absolutely terrible presidents. To attempt to honor those men who regardless of their good intentions just couldn’t make it work and to serve as reminders of the past mistakes we have made as an electorate and to never, ever repeat again.

I have my personal favorites. Here are three to think about on the next Presidents Day:

William Harrison
The 9th President of the United States who served the shortest term ever: 30 days in 1841. Harrison died from pneumonia, contracted during what has been called the longest inaugural speech. At 8,444 words, it took Harrison 2 hours to read the speech on a cold and extremely wet day, wearing neither hat nor coat. Harrison was the first Whig candidate elected to office. The 1840 campaign was against incumbent Martin Van Buren, who was portrayed as a dandy and a champagne sipping aristocrat. Harrison was the son of a wealthy Virginian planter himself, but the Whig Party championed him as a frontier, Indian fighting, log cabin living, hard cider drinking American. The Whig Party handed out free hard cider in little bottles shaped like log cabins at barbecues and bonfires; something that probably wouldn’t happen in the modern political campaign. Harrison’s legacy can be found in his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States who served one term from 1889 to 1993.

Zachary Taylor
The 12th President of the United States who served sixteen months of his term, dying from gastroenteritis in 1850. Taylor earned the nickname “Old Rough and Ready” for his rumpled clothes and wide brimmed hat he wore during the Seminole War (1835-1842) and his willingness to share his troops’ hardships. Rising to the rank of general and a war hero of the Mexican America, Taylor became a national icon and clubs were formed in 1848 to draft him into the candidacy for president. Never having expressed his political preferences, Taylor was by then a wealth plantation owner with over 100 slaves, though anti-secessionist as a way to solve the growing national dispute of the expansion of slavery into territories and states. Taylor eventually announced that he was a Whig and easily won the party nomination and went on to defeat Democratic candidate Lewis Cass and Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren. Of the portion of the term he served, Taylor was involved in debates on slavery that involved the proposals of the Compromise of 1850 resulting in the admittance of California as a free state and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring that all US citizens assist in the return of runaway slaves, regardless of the legal status of slavery in the state that the runaway was found in. Though historians have noted that Taylor did not display very strong leadership in the heated debates in the Senate. Taylor believed that the President should stand above party politics. On July 4, 1850 after attending Independence Day celebrations, and reportedly consuming a mixture of cold milk, cherries and pickled cucumbers, fell ill. He died five days later. At the time of his death, his physician reported that it was a result of cholera morbus, a combination of diarrehea and dysentery, but since then there has been more speculation on the cause of his death, ranging from heat stroke to assassination by arsenic poisoning. The later theory caught on and in 1991, descendants of Zachary Taylor gave permission for his body to be exhumed and tested for any possible signs of death by poisoning. The findings were conclusive that the cause of his death was not poisoning and that it might have been simple as something that he ate on a very hot day.

James Buchanan, Jr
The 15th President of the United States serving one term from 1857-1861. Historians often cite Buchanan as one of the five worst presidents in the history the United States (the other four are often Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover. I’m sure the sixth one will be added once his term has ended). Referred to as a “doughface”, a Northern Democrat who was aligned more with the ideology of the Southern Democrats than the Northern Democratic majority, Buchanan was not the leader that the United States needed at such a critical moment. He also gained his place in history as the only president who never married leading to much speculation that Buchanan might have also been our first homosexual president. For 15 years prior to his presidency, Buchanan lived in Washington DC with his close friend, Alabama Senator William Rufus King, and the two were referred to by their colleagues as “Buchanan and his wife.” Andrew Jackson called King “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy” (which is not surprising given Jackson’s machismo).

Buchanan had a distinguished public career having served four terms in the House of Representatives; Ambassador to Russia; two terms in the US Senate; Secretary of State in the cabinet of President James Polk and Minister to the Court of St. James. This last position took him to England from 1853 to 1856 and resulted in his drafting as the Democratic candidate for President in 1856. Democrats felt that because he was abroad during the Kansas-Nebraska debates, that he was untainted by the acrimony and bitterness of the growing controversy over slavery. Buchanan was portrayed as “Old Buck” the man who might be able to save the country from crisis. Unfortunately, Buchanan proved to be out of touch with the growing tensions between the North and the South over the issue of slavery and stayed true to the policy and belief that slavery was a matter of choice for individual states and territories. Hoping to avoid further conflict, Buchanan directed through his presidential authority the admission of Kansas as a slavery state. This resulted in the alienation of members of his party and angering the new Republican members of Congress. Time and time again, Buchanan sided with Southern Democrats in Congress and often providing them with his veto for anti-slavery legislation.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 triggered the call for secession by the Southern states. Buchanan was still in office when South Carolina left the Union, prompting him to do nothing. Claiming he couldn’t because of his lame duck stature, this only emboldened other states to leave the Union as well. His parting gift to Lincoln was a crumbling nation and on the horizon, Civil War.