From George to Barack

Franklin Pierce AAAARRRRGH.

2010-10-19T15:28:00.004-04:00

On the list of things no one ever says, you can add "Why isn't there a new biography of Franklin Pierce?" And on my list of things I never say, I've added, "Boy, I'm sure looking forward to blogging about Franklin Pierce." Just doesn't happen.

Even with a truncated schedule, I'm still thrown for a loop by Franklin Pierce, New Hampshire's only president and number 14 on the list of Chief Executives. He's bad, horribly so, and while Roy F. Nichols does his best to laud him in Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills, it's like putting a fresh coat of wax on a rusty heap (and not even that fresh a coat: Nichols's book was first published in 1931). I love that one of the reviewers on Amazon states that this is the definitive biography of Pierce, which is a little like saying you're the best breakdancer in Monaco; there's a lot less competition.

Nichols's book is an artifact of its time, written in a manner that only a few biographers might attempt now. Here's a representative selection, taken from the chapter on Pierce's days at Bowdoin: "For no matter where a college may be, whether in the heart of life or upon remote borders youth creates a pleasure world of its own in which to take its ease. Franklin had soon discovered his. There was the forest with its sweet-smelling shade, its miles of winding paths, its whispering pines with all that charm and mystery which have ever called men to the groves. There was the river with its moods. In the spring it was a furious freshet, often carrying giant tree trunks in its swift course and tossing them like chips over the falls. Always it was fascinating by day and filled the nights with a slow continuous roar which gradually sank into silence in the last few seconds before the boy was completely lost to the war in sleep."

That's only about half the paragraph, by the way. No wonder this book is 546 pages. But there's something lovely and missing now about the way Nichols writes, a florid, over-written prose that's lush to wander in for a while. But only for a while.

Maybe we shouldn't pick on Pierce; the man's obscurity is obscure. While Millard Fillmore has his funny name and James Buchanan has the rumors of homosexuality to keep them in vague public memory, Pierce is just Pierce, one of the caretaker presidents, Northerners who made concession after concession to the South in order to preserve an increasingly cobbled-together Union. Pierce had a hard life, too; at one point, he's the lowest in his class at Bowdoin, he maintains a drinking problem that affected his ability to work, and three of his sons die early deaths.

The most significant of these is his son Benjamin, Bennie, who dies in January of 1853. The President-Elect, his wife, and his son were on a train which derailed; the parents were uninjured, but Bennie Pierce was killed instantly, before his parents' eyes. "It is difficult to express adequately the effect which this...tragedy worked upon the President-Elect," writes Nichols, and I can't help but agree. Perhaps a Pierce not consumed with grief and regret and guilt would have made a difference in the final years before the Civil War; perhaps he would have moved away from strict Constitutionalism to an understanding of what America was supposed to be; perhaps all of our history might have been different.

But it wasn't. Pierce was Pierce, a man forgotten by history.

Mr. Double Hockey Sticks

2010-08-17T10:50:00.005-04:00

There are always attempts to rank the presidents, according to any number of criteria: effectiveness, legacy, corruptness, efficiency. And while every historian brings his or her own set of biases to the table, and public opinion polls reveal more about the present than they do history (I recall one a few years ago that had both Clinton and Bush II in the top ten, an indicator of partisan battle if ever one existed), surely we can all agree on one thing:

The next three presidents were awful.

To this point, I'd managed to find copies of each biography in my public library. Since I'd relied on them for the Madison and Monroe biographies (and been unimpressed by them), I've tried to steer away from the Schlesinger series. Up until Taylor, that hadn't been a problem. But Millard Fillmore? Apart from the Schlesinger, the only other biography of the 13th President was a half-joking one.

So it was off to the university's library to find a suitable book, which turned out to be Robert Rayback's Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President, published in 1959. Is it a good biography of Fillmore? I suppose so. I finished it with a pretty decent idea of who Fillmore was, why he acted the way he did, and what effect the New York political system had on both the Democrats and Whigs. But is it a good biography, compulsively readable in the way that John Adams was? No. And yet, it was to be the best presidential biography I would read in the next three months.

Here's the problem with Presidents 13-15: they're so dedicated to keeping the Union together that they do anything it takes to appease everyone. They're called 'doughfaces," because they change their countenances to suit everyone. They hold back the dam of the Union, trying to avoid a flood of secession from bursting out; when it does, ten years after Fillmore takes office, he and his successors are swept away in it.

As a result, the histories of this time are one of compromises, and it's Fillmore who's in office when the 1850 Compromise is made into law. In fact, it's Fillmore's presidency that makes the 1850 Compromise easier to pass, as the slave-holding Taylor was, oddly, against extending slavery into the southwest. Fillmore, however, has no compunctions against appeasing the South by extending slavery.

Five things happen in the Compromise of 1850:

1. California joins the Union as a free state.
2. The slave trade (but not slavery) is abolished in the District of Columbia.
3. Utah and New Mexico Territories are organized under the rule of popular sovereignty, meaning that they'd get to decide about slavery themselves.
4. Texas gives up its claim to some western lands in exchange for $10,000,000 with which to pay off its national debt, accrued while it was an independent nation.
5. The Fugitive Slave Act is passed.

If you know about the Compromise of 1850, it's probably this last part, which polarizes the nation further, and ties James Buchanan's hands when the South secedes in 1860. If you're pro-Fillmore, you argue that he managed to stave off war for ten more years. If you're anti-Fillmore, you argue that he didn't do anything but manage to stave off war for another ten years. It's a rough time to be president.

So rough, in fact, that in 1852, Fillmore can't even get nominated for a second term as president--northern Whigs block him for signing the Fugitive Slave Act and Winfield Scott runs instead. But like Martin van Buren, Fillmore takes one more shot at being president; in 1856, he runs on the Know-Nothing ticket as the candidate of a nativist party that's staunchly against the influx of immigrants, mostly Irish and German, who are coming into the country. He loses.

I have no idea why you'd ever talk about Fillmore at a party, but here's something:

"Millard Fillmore? Well, he's the only president who has double consonants in both his first and last name. Beyond that, he serves as a good warning for parties that campaign on fear, as Fillmore did, warning the populace against Irish immigrants who would take their orders from Rome instead of DC. You can't just be against something--you have to do something, too."

Flipping the Whigs

2010-08-10T09:46:00.005-04:00

You have to feel a little sorry for the Whigs when it comes to their presidents. They win two elections (in 1840 and 1848) by putting forward popular military heroes; not one, but both of those General-Presidents die in their first terms, leaving behind Vice-Presidents who are less than faithful to the Whig cause. William Henry Harrison's the first Whig President; his successor, John Tyler, is literally expelled from the Whig Party. And Zachary Taylor, Old Rough and Ready, is the second, and K. Jack Bauer chronicles his life in Zachary Taylor: Solder, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest.

Unlike Harrison, who had significant government experience as the governor of Indiana Territory, Taylor has no experience in the world of politics until he moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In a time when the Presidency is still something that no candidate claims to want (although reading these biographies, one realizes that they all wanted it so very badly), Taylor manages to be so tight-lipped about his beliefs that both the Whigs and the Democrats think he'd be a viable candidate for their party. Hell, until the election he's in, he doesn't even vote.

Taylor's famous because of his experience in the recently finished and wildly successful Mexican-American War. While it's Winfield Scott who manages to capture Mexico City, Taylor leads the American forces at Buena Vista and routs Santa Anna's 25,000 strong force with a mostly volunteer force of about 4,500. It's the last major victory in northern Mexico, and afterwards, Taylor leaves the war to pursue a political career.

As far as his presidency, goes...well. He's more notable for certain facts more than anything: last Southern President until Lyndon Johnson (!!!), last President to own slaves while in office. He's President when the Compromise of 1850 is being worked out under Henry Clay's leadership, but he dies before it's passed (accordingly, we'll save the Compromise for Millard Fillmore).

There's an interesting postscript to Taylor's story. He's killed by some cherries and milk that he eats during a Fourth of July celebration in DC; it's hot, and he gets cholera from them, dying five days later. But some historians dispute this, and think he was poisoned with arsenic because, most likely, of his moderate stance on slavery. In 1991, with the approval of his descendants and the Jefferson County (Kentucky) coroner, Taylor's body was exhumed and samples taken of hair, fingernails, and tissue. The results showed arsenic levels far too low to have poisoned the President.

Bauer's book is published in 1985, and that's the most recent of the next four books. There's a distinct lack of contemporary biographies about the presidents between Polk and Lincoln. There might be a reason for that.

Here's your party speech about Taylor: "America has often looked to military success for its presidents, and often, they've been successful: Washington, Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower. But Zachary Taylor? Well, he might have managed to use artillery to overcome a massive Mexican force, but he couldn't use grapeshot on Senators like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Stephen Douglas. I get the feeling that had he been a more successful president, more of a fuss would have been raised over exhuming him, but, as it were, no one gave too much of a damn about one of our least successful presidents, a man felled by bad fruit."

And something to file under "Encounters with Future Leaders": During the Mexican-American War, Taylor is frequently escorted by the Mississippi Rifles, a group of soldiers led by Colonel Jefferson Davis. Davis marries Taylor's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, despite ZT's wishes, but she dies just three months later (what is it with the Taylor family and dying unexpectedly?). Davis goes on to be Pierce's Secretary of War, and then, as far as I can tell, he disappears from politics.

Polk Salad

2010-08-09T12:40:00.006-04:00

Walter Borneman's biography of James K. Polk,
Polk: the Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, is so well-done and such an effusive biography of #11 that by the end, I was outraged that Polk wasn't on some sort of American money. Surely, a man who pledged himself to four main goals and completed each one in his single term as President, a man who defined the boundaries of America as we know them today (statement valid in continental US only, and let's just ignore the Gadsden Purchase, which isn't that big anyhow), a man who leads America through its first war since the War of 1812, a man who dies 103 days after leaving office having basically worked himself to death--well, that's a man who should be on a $40 bill at least.

Polk's four goals, set out by him at the beginning of his term (March, 1845):

1. Resolve the border dispute with Britain over Oregon.
2. Get California.
3. Lower the tariff.
4. Create an independent treasury.

Here's when he gets these things done:

1. 1846.
2. 1848.
3. 1846.
4. 1846.

To be fair, he does essentially start a war to achieve the second objective. There's a lot of fuss over whether or not American troops are on Texas soil or Mexican soil when they're attacked by the Mexicans. If the former, then it's an aggression; the latter, an invasion on our part. A first-term Whig congressman by the name of Abraham Lincoln makes bold speeches against Polk's war, although the Whigs are generally hamstrung the way the Democrats were when Bush invaded Iraq: how do you argue against the war without seeming like you don't support the troops? Lincoln, in fact, suffers back in Illinois when his constituency sees his arguments against the war as evidence of a lack of patriotism (this should sound really familiar).

Polk's hair is spectacular, surpassed perhaps only by Pierce. The cover of Borneman's book doesn't really do it justice. Here's a photo:

Polk's considered by most (though not Borneman, who seems offended by the idea) to be the first dark horse candidate. In 1844, everyone expects Martin van Buren, the former president, to get the nomination. But the Democrats institute a 2/3 majority rule at the convention, and van Buren's stance against annexing Texas puts too many in opposition to him. Seven ballots go by, and Lewis Cass, pro-Texas, steadily gains votes, but even though their candidate is done, the van Buren voters won't switch. On the 8th ballot, Polk's name is put forward, and he picks up 44 votes. On the 9th, with a little finagling, he gets the unanimous nod.

Here's your party talk on Polk:

"You know, it's interesting how many things we recall from grade school without actually remembering what they mean--like the phrase '54'40" or Fight!' You know it's somewhere in American history, right? It actually refers to the border dispute with Britain over Oregon Territory, which at that time encompassed Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. The Treaty of 1818, negotiated for America by John Quincy Adams, established the border at 49 degrees, but only east of the Continental Divide. Everyone wanted Oregon--America, Britain, Russia, even Spain for a while. In 1827, Britain and America agree to jointly occupy the place, but Polk comes into office in 1845 ready to settle the matter. If we'd gone for 54'40", then the last winter Olympics would have taken place in America, and you'd be able to drive to Alaska without leaving the US. But Polk and his Secretary of State, James Buchanan, negotiate to extend the 49 parallel to the Pacific Ocean, with a little hitch so all of Vancouver Island stays British. It's settled without a war--which is more than he could do with California."

Polk should be better known. If you're reading along and feel like skipping a few from these years, don't skip this one.

And this is connected to Polk in only the most sonic of ways, but I'm posting it nonetheless.

A 24 Year Party

2010-08-08T10:05:00.004-04:00

I've lived two lives with this project. The first, visible to you, is that of lazy blogger, stuck in 1841 at the beginning of the Tyler Presidency. The second, which you haven't seen, is dedicated reader, 176 pages into this month's biography of Abraham Lincoln. And I've got to tell you, starting the Abraham Lincoln biography was a relief. I knew that something would be up with this project when I realized that between Andrew Jackson (#7) leaving office in 1837 and Abraham Lincoln (#16) taking off in 1861, we went through eight presidents in 24 years: that's a prescription for mediocrity. The last eight biographies--Tyler through Buchanan--have been like being a terrible cocktail party, having to make small talk with people you'd rather avoid: "oh, you went to Bowdoin? With Nathanial Hawthorne? And he later wrote your campaign biography? That's interesting."

And then Lincoln shows up, and it's like your friend just came in the door: "Man, am I glad to see you--these guys are duds. Let's get a beer and talk."

So: I still owe you posts on #10-#16. And while I'm not going to get three posts per president, as I've tried for in the past, I'll give you enough to make small talk at any cocktail party you might go to in the future.

John Tyler, then.

Tyler's the reason the Vice-President becomes President upon the latter's death. When William Henry Harrison dies not long after taking office in 1841 (and pretty much everyone knows he's going to die once he gets sick after the Inaugural), Tyler steps up and asserts his right to the Presidency. Up to that point, no one was really sure if he'd be an Acting President, an Interim President, or still Vice-President performing the President's role. Tyler's foes called him "His Accidency."

Tyler hates Britain so much that when he visits Niagara Falls, he refuses to go see it from the Canadian side.

Tyler's the guy who annexes Texas, as one of the last acts of his presidency. It's the main thing he's remembered for, and he totally swipes his successor's campaign promise to do so. He also sends Americans to China, gets us involved with Hawai'i, and his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, negotiates a treaty with Britain to fix the border between Maine and Canada.

Henry Clay's convinced that Tyler will be the puppet of the Whigs in Congress, but when the National Bank comes up for re-chartering, Tyler vetoes it, much to the ire of Clay, who leads a movement to expel Tyler from the party. Tyler spends the next four years as a president without a party, and in fact, named his Virginia estate "Sherwood Forest" to signify that he had been outlawed by the Whigs. You can visit Sherwood Forest; in fact, Tyler's descendants still live there.

OK, here's your chat for the party: "You know, the Tea Partiers can talk as much as they like about Obama destroying the United States, but John Tyler actually worked to dissolve the Union. See, when Lincoln was elected in 1860 and South Carolina led the move to secede from the Union, Tyler actually led a Peace Commission to try to prevent war--several Northern states and the Southern states which had not yet seceded attended, and while they put forth a package of resolutions at the end of their meetings, Congress rejected them. Then, after war broke out, Tyler sided with his home state of Virginia, and was even elected to the Confederate Congress, although he died before he could take his seat. He's still the only president not to be officially mourned in Washington."

Up next: James K. Polk, who is actually cooler than anyone else at the party (until Honest Abe shows up, of course).

We're Going to Read Another Book This Month.

2010-06-18T23:45:00.003-04:00

It's June here, but on our calendar, it's still February, the shortest month. Plenty of time to squeeze in a second president, especially since the first of the month only served for a few weeks. So let's read Edward Crapol's John Tyler: the Accidental President.

Here's the single most interesting thing about Tyler: he's the first man to appoint himself president. Seriously. We now understand the Vice-President to be the natural successor to the President, but when William Henry Harrison drops dead in the spring of 1841, no one has any real idea who gets to be President. Tyler steps up and announces he'll do the job--not as acting President, but as President for the rest of the term. He's headstrong and independent. This will cost him.

William Henry Harrison on American Time

2010-06-10T13:31:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this post in a house built in 1791, or, as I keep thinking of it, during Washington's first term. It's a stone farm house in Kentucky, which, at the time, was perhaps the wildest bit of wilderness in America--some serious Daniel Boone-Cumberland Gap-type stuff going on here.

It's easy in America to be overwhelmed by time. We are still so young, relatively, even if we have a steady presence in the world that other, long-lived countries (such as Poland, founded around 1000 but which did not exist as a political entity at two different periods last century) do not. We are young, we lack--as they say--institutional memory. We create ideas about ourselves as a country that do not reflect the facts: the founders were all Christian, the slaves were better off under slavery, the whites destroyed the Indians without prejudice or hesitation.

William Henry Harrison: he does his work in the wilderness of Indiana Territory, defeating Tecumsah at Tippicanoe and cementing his legend, but only as a vaguely remembered campaign slogan, confused with "54-40 Or Fight!" in a junior high school class. But that historical fact--William Henry Harrison defeated Tecumsah at Tippicanoe--becomes the basis for the first true presidential campaign. The well-to-do Harrison, son of a Virginian who signed the Declaration of Independence and who was born in a plantation, is presented as a cider-drinking, log-cabin-residing plain-spoken Everyman for the Whig voters. And it works. He's elected as the ninth president, defeating the incumbent Van Buren.

He dies a month into his presidency, which is fitting, because it means he is only an idea, which is maybe all he ever was, all any president can ever be to his constituents, his country.

Indiana as Wilderness

2010-06-02T21:46:00.002-04:00

From age two to age seven, I lived (with my family, as was custom those days), in Warsaw, Indiana, a town so conservative that it actually held a book burning while we lived there--Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; I have to admit that it's a little upsetting to think about that happening in the town with my first public library.

And while I don't really have a whole treasure trove of memories--I was in single digits the whole time, let me remind you--I do remember a few things that run counter to the popular conception of the Midwest as flyover country: a barn burning by the side of the highway, an ice skating rink in the middle of a mall's food court, a praying mantis walking along the cement of our front porch.

Small things, indeed, but they remind me that Indiana still holds the possibility of being a place of wilderness and wonder, a place that hangs out in the back of my mind while reading Mr. Jefferson's Hammer. We've gone back in time here, even from Harrison's month as President in 1840, to the early days of America, when Indiana Territory was about as far west as any white man went, and Harrison, fighter and territorial governor, made his fame and fortune. And although nothing as clear as we might like--the Battle of Tippicanoe, which makes WHH's reputation, gets exaggerated, and this is less cowboys-vs-Indians than it is the federal government pitting tribes against each other (and inter-tribal relationships aren't a whole lot better)--the Indiana of 1800 still feels like a place of potential, of danger and wildness, of the elements that make a history exciting.

Another Chance, Kinda

2010-05-17T12:24:00.003-04:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that "There are no second acts in American lives." He obviously hadn't been paying attention to American politics, because there are plenty of second acts there; even George Washington's presidency is a second act, following the first act of his generalship in the Revolutionary War (fun fact: Washington retires to Mount Vernon after the war's end pretty much convinced he's going to die soon, since all his male relatives passed away early on; he doesn't, and become president).

Martin van Buren is a great example of a second act. 1840 sees van Buren lose the presidency to William Henry Harrison, thereby becoming the first single-term president whose name isn't Adams. In 1844, he's convinced he can come back and win again, but even though he has a slight majority at the Democratic convention, he can't get the necessary two-thirds of delegates because he opposes immediate annexation of the newly-independent Texas. His support collapses, and on the eighth ballot, James K. Polk gets the nomination.

Polk wins, which would shut van Buren out of the Oval Office for eight years except for the fact that Polk pledges to serve a single term. So in 1848, the Little Magician is back with a brand new party: The Free Soil Party. The annexation of Texas aggravates the slavery question: will the US allow slavery in these new territories? The two major parties are both in favor of managing slavery--in fact, early on, the abolitionist movement is seen as a group of crazy agitators--but they keep wanting to push it out west. And while there are plenty of people in the parties who oppose slavery (John Quincy Adams, for example), both parties favor the Union over everything else. Preserving the fragile coalition of states must take precedence.

But not for the Free Soil party. It opposes the westward expansion of slavery, and draws upon the members of the Whig and Democratic parties who find themselves under-represented by their leaders. For the 1848 election, they put up van Buren, as well as JQA's son, Charles Francis Adams for their presidential ticket.

They lose, as you might imagine. You don't have to be a member of the the United States Marijuana Party to know that single-issue parties traditionally don't do so well in American politics. But the Free Soilers do have a major effect on the election of 1848: they take away enough votes in New York (MvB's state) from Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee and hand it to Zachary Taylor, the Whig nominee. New York's 36 electoral votes puts the victory into Taylor's hands.

It might not have been the second act he wanted, but Martin van Buren managed to decide a presidential election one more time.

Love Story, 1841

2010-05-03T15:17:00.002-04:00

What do you say about a 68-year old President who died?

William Henry Harrison died 32 days into his term; he was president from March 4, 1841, to April 4, 1841 (and really, he dies at 12:30 in the morning, so giving him that 32nd day is generous). So how do you write a Presidential Biography about a tenure shorter than the time between haircuts?

I had initially thought about a young reader book (here's a weird thing I've noticed at my public library: there's a kids' book for just about every president, including the obscure ones, the ones they don't have an adult biography for; apparently while some kids are still getting stuck with an assigned report on Millard Fillmore, no sane adult wants to read about him). Then I found Robert M. Owens's Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy. Let's read that, instead, and perhaps if his presidency is uneventful, his life leading up to it won't be.

Stating the Case

2010-05-02T14:56:00.000-04:00

I've figured out who the next president will be, thanks to reading these biographies. It's all so clear--I mean, out of the first eight presidents, five have this job, and we really can't count Washington in the list, since there's not really a government to have a job in before he becomes president. So I'm happy to announce that in 2016, the next President of the United States will be our current Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton!

Oh, wait. You're telling me that after Martin van Buren--Jackson's Secretary of State--becomes president in 1836, that only one other Secretary of State becomes President? Hmm...maybe Hil doesn't have this thing locked up.

But why have we made that change? At first glance, Secretary of State seems like the perfect position to become president: you get plenty of foreign policy experience, you're one of the president's trusted advisers, you're important enough to be the first cabinet member in the president succession line. The State Department website describes the job's duties thusly: The Secretary of State, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is the President's chief foreign affairs adviser. The Secretary carries out the President's foreign policies through the State Department and the Foreign Service of the United States.

That's some important stuff. So why do we keep electing senators and governors, guys with single state experience, to run the whole dang country? Perhaps it's due to a desire to start over every 4 or 8 years--to separate ourselves from the previous administrations. But Bush the Elder won on what was basically a four-more-years-of-Reagan platform (I've always thought the Republicans must have regretted the presidential term limit amendment they put in the Constitution after FDR, as Reagan would have won a third term handily), and Gore tried to win on a four-more-years-of-Clinton platform (while at the same time trying to distance himself from Clinton himself). So that can't be the whole reason.

Perhaps it's due to the idea that we're less regionally defined now. This seems odd to write in the era of red-state-blue-state politics, but after slavery (and it's worth pointing out that Buchanan, the president right before Lincoln, is the last SoS to become president), we no longer think too much about a president who represents our region of the country--that's how you get Vermonters voting for an Arkansan and Alaskans voting for a Texan. So maybe the SoS was the guy who, by virtue of focusing on foreigners, was free of the regional stain--which is how a New Yorker like van Buren could appeal--for a single election cycle, anyway--to the slaveholding Southern Jacksonites.

So, Hillary, good luck. While the State job is an impressive line on the resume, it's not the growth position it once was.

Party Animal

2010-04-19T07:55:00.004-04:00

I used to think that Martin van Buren's lasting contribution to American life was the phrase "OK," having been taught in grade school that it came from one of his nicknames: "Old Kinderhook."

Well, that and this:

Van Buren's a punchline, an answer to a trivia question; he's shorthand for "obscure president." And yet, if what I'm reading is right, Martin van Buren has more of a lasting effect on American politics than anyone between Jefferson and Lincoln. Van Buren, you see, invents the political party.

The Little Magician (along with "The Red Fox"; let's put it out there: van Buren has the best nicknames of any president) is one of the main developers of the Democratic Party in New York. Why New York? Because New York's the first state to extend the vote to non-landowning white males. So suddenly, controlling politics can't be the province of a few back-room deals, and the ideal of the founding fathers--no permanent political parties--goes out the window because there are literally thousands of new voters. Parties are a means of wrangling them, and van Buren's the one behind it.

So: Republican vs Democrat, Whig vs Free Soil, Know-Nothing vs Tea--it can all be traced back to van Buren. Whether we should be pleased by that, I'm not sure.

"So Everything Went Wrong."

2010-04-16T15:29:00.005-04:00

As a transplant to the Commonwealth, I'm always excited to see Virginia in the news, which it's been recently for any number of reasons, mostly not good. Our new Attorney General, one Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II (side note: when did "Jr." go out of style?) has filed a lawsuit against the federal government and its brand-new health care law, arguing that people who don't choose to buy health insurance aren't participating in interstate commerce (which the federal government has the power to regulate) and therefore aren't under the control of the federal government.

To wit: "The health care reform bill, with its insurance mandate, creates a conflict of laws between the federal government and Virginia. Normally, such conflicts are decided in favor of the federal government, but because we believe the federal law is unconstitutional, Virginia’s law should prevail."

I kept waiting in the days after the announcement of the suit (and the other states' suit) for someone to bring up Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Crisis. Perhaps liberals were too busy high-fiving each other and conservatives were too busy making up Thomas Jefferson quotations to delve into another situation in which a state butted up against the federal government.

Here's a seventh-grader's explanation of the crisis:

"In 1828, Congress passed a tariff. The New England manufacturers had a great plan for the tariff. Now New England could raise prices to sell out imported products (stuff from a different country). Then the southern planters didn't want to pay extra for manufactured goods. So Vice President Calhoun stepped in and said, “We don't have to pay.” So everything went wrong. Then two years later, on April 13, 1830, the Southerners held a dinner for states’ rights. At the dinner, a series of toasts were made. One of the toasts were made by Jackson. He stood up and said for his toast, “Our union must be preserved next to our liberty.” Then Congress lowered the prices of manufacturers’ goods but the Southerners refused it. So in 1833, Jackson got Congress to pay the Force Bill. The Force Bill gave power to the government to use the army and the navy if needed to enforce federal law. A compromise tariff was passed and accepted by South Carolina, the state that threatened to secede. Then the nullification crisis ended."

Here's Meacham on the crisis:

"After the nullification vote in November, Jackson was embarking on perhaps the most delicate mission of his life--how to preserve the Union without appearing so tyrannical and power-hungry that other Southern states might join with South Carolina, precipitating an even graver crisis that could lead to the secession of several states."

It works--the Union stays together for almost another 30 years. But Jackson is vilified in the media; cartoons appear of him wearing a crown, referring to him as "King Andrew" (I assume that this is because neither Hitler nor the Joker exist yet). And when he pulls the deposits out of the Bank of America in favor of a system of smaller banks, he's censured by the Senate, the first time it's ever happened in the 60 years of the country, and he spends the rest of his life trying (and eventually succeeding at) reversing it.

Jackson's a Democrat, maybe the first real one, and he realizes what the Democrats have always realized: that a strong federal government strengthens America, and a strong federal government will always be accused of tyranny. The Whigs and Republicans, as we'll see, campaign on the idea of states' rights and a small federal government, but from Jefferson to Bush, once they take power, they expand the executive branch's reach more and more.

Man of Style

2010-04-14T15:41:00.005-04:00

Look, I'm a narrative junkie as much as the next guy, maybe even more so. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything by pointing out that American Lion is a much more exciting book to read than the chosen Van Buren biography mostly because Meacham tells it as a story, quoting so often from letters that it reads sometimes as spoken dialogue (although, honestly, you could probably tell that just from a comparison of the titles).

So I feel a little bad to complain about Meacham's style, especially when I go back to the book itself and realize that he doesn't commit the offense nearly as much as I remembered him doing. Then again, the offense (which I'll reveal in the next paragraph) happened enough that I regarded it as one of the dominant features of the book.

Here it is, from page 176, the end of chapter 12:

"John Quincy Adams was preparing for a trip when word arrived of the mass resignations. Calling it the "explosion at Washington," Adams reported to his son that "people stare--and laugh--and say, what next?"

"It was a good question."

And here it is again, from page 320, the end of chapter 31:

"The great room seemed, for a moment, filled with flakes of snow. It had been a spectacular, enchanting day--of family ties and affection and gifts and grace. But like the snowball skirmish, which Mary Rachel found "exhilarating and inspiring" though "provokingly brief," the day was soon over. Emily saw the guests out, and the tired children were tucked into bed upstairs.

"She would be dead within the year."

Meacham doesn't end all his chapters this way--not even half of them--and yet that style, ending the chapter with a kicker sentence, dun dun DUN!, feels forced, like Meacham's trying to drive as much narrative as possible into his book. And while American Lion's ultimately a very readable book (something it shares with fellow Pulitzer winner John Adams), it shouldn't have to resort to such Saturday-melodramatics.

Lucky Number Eight?

2010-04-01T15:41:00.004-04:00

The wheels of this project grind on, and as we move from Founding Fathers to the Great Blank Space Between Jackson and Lincoln, you can keep up by reading our next selection: Joel H. Sibley's Martin van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics, our next presidential biography.

A funny story about the selection process for this book: when it's possible, I check out both my school's copy and the public library's copy of a book, so that E and I can both read at the same time. It's worked fine up until this point. But while I checked out the public library's copy of Sibley's book, I managed to check out Donald Cole's 1984 biography Martin van Buren and the American Political System. I didn't notice this for a month.

That's not exactly Marx Brother-level hysterics, but it should, if nothing else, give you an idea of van Buren's major contribution to American history.

Celebrity Presidential Rehab

2010-03-31T15:06:00.000-04:00

If you've kept up with this (tragically underposted) blog, then it's probably not a stretch for you to imagine me as the kind of kid who would ask people who their favorite president was. This is the reason why whenever I think of Andrew Jackson, I think of my mother, who named him as her favorite president back when I was six or so.

This doesn't jive with my contemporary understanding of my mother, though--the mother who, along with my father, drove me and my little sister out West to visit pueblos and powwows, who, when she and my father visited me last month, picked
The National Museum of the American Indian as her number one sight to see in DC, a town she hadn't been to since 1981.

And if you've read or listened to Sarah Vowell on the subject, you know the problem of Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal. More than any president, we associate Jackson with the stealing of American lands. He's the guy on the $20 bill, but he's the original Great White Father, the man who states in his second annual message to Congress that "toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people."

Or, in other words, demolish their way of life in order to make them more like us.

So, cue the music: how do you solve a problem like Andrew Jackson?

Jon Meacham gives it the old college try in American Lion, which attempts (and, given its success, Pulitzer and all that, succeeds) to rehabilitate Jackson into a man for whom the Union was paramount, trumping all concerns--even those of the humanitarian sort.

Meacham writes that "in the hierarchy of Jackson's concerns, the sanctity of the Union outranked any other consideration. As long as the Indians were in the heart of the nation, they were threats--and as threats they had to be removed."

Does this work? Does framing a pretty atrocious act (Indian Removal) within the larger good (preserving the Union) count as a way of rescuing a president from the Bad list? We won't read about FDR until September of 2011, but does the general idea of protecting America from attack justify the specific idea of putting American citizens in internment camps? We won't read GWB until August of 2012, but does the general idea of protecting America from attack justify torture?

I've thought before that writing a biography is an act of love. But now I wonder what kind of love it is: is it the kind of love a child has for a parent--Daddy can do no wrong--or the kind of love a spouse has for his/her partner--I love you despite your flaws?

Skipping Over Some Ugly Details

2010-03-10T10:30:00.006-05:00

You know you're in biographical trouble when your author starts the paragraph on your presidency this way: "It may confound some readers that biography of any American president should devote only a single chapter to his administration. Nevertheless, such brevity seems appropriate for John Quincy Adams."

Yikes. That can't be a good sign.

Nagel's right, of course: Adams does not have a good presidency by any standard (even that of his father, who, until his son matched him, was the only single-term president). What is significant about JQA's term in office is how it ends: with what we can accurately call the first real presidential campaign. In the elections leading up to 1828, candidates were generally expected to avoid campaigning--to see the idea of being elected as a noble calling that they passively received, a burden borne by those chosen. Their supporters, on the other hand, felt free to go after the other candidates with knives sharpened.

In 1828, Adams (who lost the popular vote but won in the House of Representatives) ran against the man he'd simultaneously lost to and beaten in 1824: General Andrew Jackson. Jackson, wildly popular as the winner of the Battle of New Orleans, had won the popular vote in 1824. Adams's crew went after him with vigor; not only did they accuse him of executing deserters and killing men in duels (which was, um, true), but they also went after Jackson's wife, Rachel. They accused the couple of committing bigamy, since Rachel was technically still married to another man when she and Jackson were wed (the divorce went through later, and the Jacksons had a second marriage performed to try to make up for it, although that never stopped the gossip).

The stress and strain of the campaign took its toll on both Jackson and his wife, and in the latter's case, it actually proved fatal; Rachel Jackson died in December of 1828, one month after her husband finally won the presidency.

The founding fathers feared political parties, seeing them as unnecessarily divisive. But the presidents who followed them, especially JQA, Jackson, and Van Buren--develop the idea of political party towards what it is today.

On Tour, He's at Home

2010-02-22T16:21:00.005-05:00

One of the things I like about this project is the chance it gives me to think about American history as a thing that happens in a place; since four of the first five presidents were Virginians, as am I right now, I've taken the opportunity to go to the same places they went (Monroe's Ashlawn-Highland, you're next). There's a certain frisson I feel as a history dork when I look into the room at Mount Vernon where Washington entertained Jefferson, or look at the blots of ink on the floor of James Madison's office.

I haven't been able to do that with either Adams, though, since Boston's a little too far away to get to on a day trip, and most of our weekends are spent trying to catch up with the week. So I was pleased to get the chance to visit this John Quincy Adams site:

If you're a fan of international typefaces, you'll recognize these signs as Berlin city streets, and this intersection--not too far from Unter den Linden, one of the great streets of Europe, and even closer to an H&M, one of the great European department stores (their collaboration with Sonia Rykiel covered a massive, several hundred feet tall building in Potsdamer Platz).

We were there because of a single paragraph in Nagel's biography, referring to Louisa Adams's difficulties in pregnancy; not long after their arrival in Prussia, where JQA would serve as the American Ambassador, she miscarried. Nagel writes: "To comfort his wife, John began a search for an apartment more convenient and comfortable where she could feel at home. He found one near the Brandenburg Gate, with a landlord who played an overpowering game of chess. Eventually, they would move again, this time to the corner of Frederic and Behren Streets."

So there we were, at that same intersection. It was raining, and cold, rush hour in Berlin, and for some reason I was only wearing a single mitten (I hadn't lost its mate, but nevertheless, just had one on). And part of me wondered: here we were, a pair of Americans on a grand tour of Europe (we'd continue on from Berlin to Munich, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Kobarid, and Rome), and we were finding a spot where another pair of Americans had been. Was this the historical equivalent of finding the McDonald's near the Spanish Steps or the Hard Rock Cafe on the Via Veneto? After all, Berlin is a city with enough layers of history to overwhelm (in a way, that's what I like about it). Napoleon and Hitler had both walked through the Brandenburg Gate, but we were more interested in one of our own, a minor president.

Too much to consider, and too rainy that day. We went off in search of Haribo instead.

A Subtle Shift

2010-02-16T15:24:00.000-05:00

What's unusual about this picture?

For starters, it's a photograph. That's a new thing. In fact, John Quincy Adams is the first president for whom we've got photographic evidence. The first five presidents: only paintings, which are never quite as mimetic as we'd like them to be. Even when a painter is as faithful as possible to the sitter's appearance, he or she still can't quite replicate the real thing. But a photograph--that's different.

It's appropriate that John Quincy Adams is our first president to be captured by the new technology--our first president for whom we've got a "real" picture. That's because he's also the first president whose entire life we can trace. He's born to a famous father (or at least a father who will be famous soon, and keeps his own diary), and, at the age of 11, starts his own diary, which he keeps off and on (like everyone else with a diary) for the rest of his long, illustrious life.

And there may not be a president who's so involved in the beginning of the Republic. Take a look at what he does during, say, the first sixty years of the United States:

--Washington appoints him (at age 26!) to be the Ambassador to the Netherlands.
--Adams (his father) appoints him to be the Ambassador to Prussia.
--Jefferson doesn't want him for his administration, so JQA becomes a Senator from Massachusetts.
--Madison appoints him as the Ambassador to Russia and later the United Kingdom.
--Monroe names him his Secretary of State. In fact, the Monroe Doctrine is written by Adams.
--Jackson defeats JQA in the election of 1830. Adams sits out two years, then runs for and wins a seat in the House, representing Massachusetts. He's there for seventeen years, through the Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk administrations. He collapses in the House during a vote on commemorating the Mexican-American War and dies a few days later.

From President #1 to President #11, John Quincy Adams is involved in the government of the United States (including a term as President #6). In a sense, his story is the story of the beginning of the country. It's a wonder that Nagel's book is only 419 pages.

In case you haven't noticed...

2010-02-16T14:50:00.000-05:00

...we're behind. Well behind. As in, just starting to write about President #6 when we should be on President #10 (although, if nothing else, I'm keeping up with the reading).

So, in order to remedy the situation, I hereby announce the Inaugural (because nothing's "annual" until the second year) From George to Barack Post-Presidents' Day Post-a-Thon Extravaganza! A week's worth of daily postings, taking us through Adams and Jackson into the wilderness of the mid-19th century's parade of Ol' What's-His-Names. Follow along as you recuperate from your shopping hangover.

The Gentlemen From Virginia and Colorado

2010-02-03T15:41:00.004-05:00

I feel bad for Gary Hart.

It's been 23 years since he told reporters that anyone who cared to tail him could, that "they'd be very bored," only to have a photo of him and Donna Rice splashed on the front pages of newspapers around the country, demolishing his presidential bid and sending Michael Dukakis into the lead for the Democratic nomination (and there's a historical "what if?" for you).

I feel bad for Hart not for his infidelity or scandal, or even for the fact that he was dumb enough to challenge the press when he knew he was doing wrong, but rather for the fact that he's gone on to better things. He's served on the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism, which suggested a number of policy changes three years before September 11th, and he continues to advocate for more responsible energy usage and policies. He's stayed active enough in politics to have been discussed as a member of a theoretical John Kerry cabinet ("what if?" #2). And, of course, he wrote a biography of James Monroe.

I feel bad that despite the fact that he bounced back from a potentially career-killing moment, when I search for "James Monroe Gary Hart" on Google Images so that I can post a picture of the book for this blog, the page that comes up still results in no fewer than three pictures of Donna Rice (two of the famous photo of her on Hart's lap and a swimsuit shot).

It's probably worth thinking about Hart's role as a politician in writing his biography; unlike the four previous authors, his day job isn't historian. And while it's certainly easy enough to hear echoes of modern-day politics in the biographies of the Founding Fathers (the Argus being the Fox News of its day), it's Hart thinking as a politician who makes the first explicit connection I've seen to contemporary politics.

Like Frost's "The Road Not Taken," the Monroe Doctrine is an important piece of American Writing that's almost always misunderstood. You know how Frost ends his poem with "I took the road less traveled by / and that has made all the difference" (click the link if the last time you heard it was high school graduation)? Everyone loves that part! It's inspiring! "Go, young people, and follow your dreams!"

Very few people ever put the end of the second stanza on a t-shirt: "though as for that the passing there / had worn them really about the same," probably because the implication--neither road is really less traveled than the other, and they're pretty much the same road, just going in different directions--carpes a lot less diem.

Hart argues that American politics misreads the Monroe Doctrine like a sophomore waiting for the bell--we've remembered the memorable, exciting, back-the-fuck-off-Europe part, and skipped the middle stanzas. Hart points out that the Monroe Doctrine is reciprocal--not only does it state that Europe should stay out of the Western Hemisphere, it also states that America will stay out of Europe's affairs. It's not so much an assertion of power as it is a still-newborn country trying to keep its turf. Here's Hart: "Speaking today, Monroe might have reduced his foreign policy principles to a single premise: we will resist hegemony without seeking hegemony."

OK, not bad. We've been misreading it. Hart, however, starts calling out people. Here's the end of the book's penultimate chapter: "the saliency of the Monroe Doctrine in the twenty-first century is now being tested in a highly convoluted fashion. President George W. Bush's effort to expand the reach of the doctrine globally represents a radical departure from Monroe's original intent in two important ways: first, it extends U.S. hegemony from the Western Hemisphere to the entire globe; and, second, it shifts from U.S. rejection of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere to U.S. imposition of its values everywhere. Where Monroe sought to protect fledgling South American republics from European intrusion, Bush stands Monroe's doctrine on its head by extending a form of democratic imperialism into the far corners of the planet."

And here's the kicker:

"James Monroe would be the first to say that America as empire is no longer America as republic."

That's some gloves-off biographin' there. In a time when both parties seek to present themselves as the heirs of 1776, putting words in the mouth of a guy who's been dead since 1831 seems risky. But Hart, unlike the other biographers (so far), hasn't been afraid to point out how America as a political entity had shifted from the time of his subject to now. At this point, that is the road less traveled by.

Winter Recess

2009-12-09T16:35:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes, we're behind, aren't we? I should be talking about Andrew Jackson by now, and we're not even through with James Monroe (who should be the easiest president for me to write about, considering that I live in the town he retired to and occasionally walk my dog past the James Monroe Museum).

So let's do what Congress does and take a recess. Here are two books for you to read: Paul C. Nagel's John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life and Jon Meacham's Pulitzer winning American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

We'll pick back up in the new year.

The Boy Becomes the Man

2009-11-19T10:43:00.003-05:00

It only took five months for me to start dreaming about presidents.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that a teenaged James Monroe and I were both in high school (a colonial high school, if I remember correctly; definitely not my actual high school). He and I ran around the school, pulling pranks on people.

When I woke from the dream, it was just before dawn. In the dark, I was neither relieved, as though I'd just woken from a nightmare, or disappointed, as though I'd just woken from a pleasant dream. Instead, I was confused. Why on earth had I dreamed of pulling pranks with James Monroe? Was it a subconscious translation of his lasting contribution, the Monroe Doctrine? Were we asserting our right to our hemisphere? Was it a reaction to having read about Secretary of War Monroe heading out to the front lines to scout the British during the War of 1812?

I think it's this: Monroe is the first president with a documented childhood. Oh, with the first four, we understand very basic things like dates of birth and schools attended, but there's rarely much about them as a child or young man. This is odd, because I think we're trained to understand childhood as formative--that the boy is a version of the man. Absent this key part of biography, we lose something--the satisfaction of the reader-as-parent, watching our subject grow and learn, knowing all along what he or she will become.

That's why, I think, Gary Hart opens his Monroe biography with Monroe "a young lieutenant, merely eighteen years of age, who earlier that year had been a sophomore at the College of William and Mary." He's crossing the Delaware to attack Trenton during the Revolutionary War. He's a boy still, but we know who he'll become--the last of the Patriot Presidents. We know he'll deal with national security in a way that no president has before him.

The painter Emanuel Leutze puts Monroe just behind Washington in his famous painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware." There's no historical record proving that Monroe was on the same barge, but the message delivered by the painting is clear: here is a man who will follow Washington into battle and into the Presidency.

Moving Back Into Montpelier

2009-11-12T16:38:00.006-05:00

This was my first view of James Madison's Montpelier:

It was a rainy day, solidly unpleasant in the weather, and a large moving van blocked the front door (unloading A/V equipment for the day's Constitution Day festivities), but there was still something reassuring about it--the house felt like the kind of place that, after two terms as president, I'd like to retire. And this is, indeed, how Montpelier looked when Madison returned to it in 1817, after a presidency that saw the nation's capital burned in its first war as a sovereign nation.

What's remarkable is that Montpelier didn't look like this six years ago. While Mount Vernon stayed in the Washington family and was then passed onto the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, and Monticello had the good fortune to pass from Jefferson to a family who kept his house pretty much as it was, Montpelier was sold to settle debts and passed through a number of hands before ending up with the duPont family. When, in 1984, the heirs of Marian duPont Scott, following her wishes, donated the house to the National Trust, Montpelier had been added to until it was almost unrecognizable. In fact, when the Montpelier Foundation (who own the house now, having received it from the National Trust in 2000) began restoring it in 2003, their first order of business was to take off 24,000 square feet of house. Montpelier as it stands now is 12,000 square feet. Do the math; Madison's home was buried under something twice its size.

That project took the Montpelier Foundation five years. Now they've moved on to phase two of the restoration: bringing back the furniture. Imagine the impossibility of the situation; almost two hundred years after it was sold, re-sold, and handed down through heavens knows how many families, the Madisons' furniture is making its way back to their home piece by piece. And while in the 19th century, you could make an appeal based on patriotism or love of Washington or Jefferson, in 2009 those sentiments don't exactly run as strong as they used to.

And so a visit to Montpelier these days is to visit an empty house. Rather than teem with the stuff of Presidents past, Montpelier is an exercise in imagination. They're pretty sure they know which room the Madisons slept in, because the mantle of the fireplace is the most ornate. They think they've got the right color of paint on the walls, because they had to take twenty-something layers off to find the 1817 layer.

There are some aids to imagination, though, including a life-size statue (no short jokes, please) of the Madisons in the backyard, reading together. Cute and friendly, and not misleading like the statues of the Washingtons at Mount Vernon (which show Washington with his step-grandchildren; you have to know this to avoid assuming they're his kids and that GW didn't have any children of his own).

But the most interesting part of Montpelier for me was Madison's study, where he researched and wrote the Constitution. Despite the lack of furniture or historical guides, the tour guides at Montpelier know exactly where Madison's desk was, thanks to the ink splotches on the floor. I stood there, on a cold, rainy morning, alone in the room, looking down at blots on the floor, and felt the same frisson I'd felt at Yorktown Battlefield; here is one of the places where America, with all its flaws and beauties, its contradictions and its ideals, became possible.

It's a giving time of year, and while charities that help the living are of utmost importance, it's also important to remember that donations are down everywhere. If you've got a few extra bucks in your pocket after gift-giving, you might consider donating to the Montpelier Foundation. It's not every day you get to help bring a President's furniture home, or build a center to teach people about the Constitution, or just improve a house by taking away from it.

On Republican Governors of Virginia

2009-11-03T10:30:00.002-05:00

Well, if the polls are any indication, it looks like Virginia will have itself a Republican governor-elect at the end of the day today.

In honor, or perhaps trepidation, of Robert McDonnell's upcoming four years at the helm, it seems only appropriate to announce our next biography, that of a former Republican governor of Virginia (but written by a Democratic senator from Colorado): Gary Hart's James Monroe.

Before we start with the last Founding Father to run the country, though, we'll take a trip to James Madison's house, Montpelier.

A Question of Greatness

2009-11-02T14:18:00.004-05:00

Alright, four presidents in, and I feel it's about time to ask: when is anyone going to be any good at being president?

The four biographies we've read so far, without an exception, point out that their subjects were better at whatever they were doing beforehand than being the chief executive. Jefferson himself even goes so far as to keep being president off of his tombstone, opting instead for his roles in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom, as well as founding the University of Virginia.

Washington does a decent job as president, but nothing special; his job as Commander-in-Chief is to hold the country together in its fragile newness. Adams not only signs the Alien and Sedition Acts--pretty indefensible, no matter how hard any biographer might try--but he also manages to become the first one-term president. Jefferson violates his party's principles (no advocate of small government is going to be OK with buying a whole lotta territory without Congress's approval); not to mention the fact that Jefferson hates being president so much he essentially bails four months before the end of his second term, leaving Madison (the president-elect) to run the country (oddly enough, Wills's biography of Madison points this, but Bernstein's biography of Jefferson doesn't mention it at all). And you don't get to be a great president if the nation's capital gets burned to the ground on your watch (again, a Republican has to realize that one of his party's platforms--no standing army--might not be without its disadvantages).

And these are the Founding Fathers! The guys we look up to as Paragons of Presidential Prestige!

Maybe it's because of the newness of the whole thing; they're making it up as they go along. After all, no one was campaigning for the post--such a thing was considered disgraceful then--but they did do enough backchannel work to get the jobs. Perhaps, with only a few people to talk to about being president and very little American history to learn from (not to mention how little republican democracies had ever existed), we should expect some stumbles.

Garry Wills points out something interesting about Madison in the closing chapter of his biography; that despite the bungling of the War of 1812--despite the fact that "he accomplished not a single one of the five goals he set out for the war to succeed"--Madison still managed to hand the reins over to James Monroe, a member of his own party.

"Given all these factors," Wills writes, "historians have not boosted Madison, considered as president, out of the average rank. On the other hand, they do not count him a failure--and they cannot. He was too popular at the end of his second term. He must have been doing something right." The emphasis is mine--if you're considering Madison as a Founding Father, he does pretty well.

Wills continues: "Despite the problems and setbacks of his chosen course, he never panicked. He was coolest at the darkest times. Admittedly, he was helped in this by his very flaws. In his provincialism and naivete he continued to underestimate the British, thinking they must have been badly harmed by his embargo."

What's more American than taking your flaws and turning them into advantages for you? Madison may not have been a great president, but he got the country through its first official war, rebounded from the burning of Washington, and managed to secure a peace with England that's lasted since. And that's good enough to get you on some currency.

The Littlest President

2009-10-14T15:10:00.002-04:00

I had this idea, a while ago, that the first four presidents--Founding Father presidents--could easily be compared to the Beatles. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are obviously the Lennon-McCartney of the group; they do a lot of good work together, they love each other, fight a bunch, then make up. George Washington is George Harrison; quiet, underrated.

That, of course, means that James Madison is Ringo. Because he's short. And fourth.

This is unfair. Madison does some pretty incredible things both before he's president and later during his presidency. He writes a third of the Federalist Papers. He's the Father of the Bill of Rights. He's as insistent as Jefferson--maybe even more so--about the separation of church and state (and as Garry Wills points out, organized religion hasn't flourished nearly as well in any other industrialized country as it has in the US). He gets the country through its first war ever, and in doing so, sets it on its way to eventual world power.

Of course, to do so, he has to reverse his course on almost everything. But, as Wills points out pretty often, consistency isn't his strong point, and several times, one of Madison's faults will turn out to be his strong suit (and vice versa).

But, as Wills also points out, he's got the problem of following those other three guys. He's never going to crack the top ten. And even though Ringo wrote some decent songs ("Don't Pass Me By" comes to mind), he's always going to be overshadowed by John, Paul, and George (Harrison, not Washington).

Outgunned!

2009-10-06T13:48:00.002-04:00

Everything I've written below about Jefferson and Monticello is done so much better, and with lovely art to boot, by Maria Kalman in her blog for the New York Times.

The Colonel and Monticello

2009-10-02T14:15:00.004-04:00

It has occurred to me already, four months into this project, that writing a biography of someone is an act of love. You become attached to the person, reading his or her letters and diaries and journals, tracing steps across the continents. You start to think that you really know your subject, and certainly you do, more so than 99% of the rest of the populace. It's your job--your duty, even--to translate his or her life into modern-day language, to revivify them. That's a heavy thing to have to do. You might get a little defensive sometimes about the flaws of the person you love.

Or a lot defensive, in the case of Jefferson. Witness the man who led our tour of Monticello; if he told us his name at the beginning of the tour, I forgot it the moment another staff member addressed him as "The Colonel." This is where we met him, on the steps of Monticello:

I was very excited about the steps of Monticello--you see, one of the things I've always liked about Jefferson is his inventiveness--stands that let him read five books simultaneously, closet space in the high, formerly wasted upper space of the house, little lazy susans that allow food and wine to appear magically in the dining room. The ceiling of the front porch of Monticello is the first chance you get to experience this kind of genius:

It's a compass attached to the weathervane; Jefferson the agrarian scholar can step out on his porch during a storm and learn the direction of the wind without getting wet. Brilliant!

We skipped it without a mention, and went inside. Now, to be fair to the Colonel, he did point out Jefferson's days-of-the-week clock in the entry hall, and a few other gizmos, but this set a tone. In side the entry hall, the Colonel pointed out a mastodon tooth of Jefferson's as proof of his scientific curiosity, but did not mention my favorite Jefferson fact: that he told Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for mastodons while they explored the Louisiana Purchase, as Jefferson was sure they still roamed out there somewhere.

No mention of this from the Colonel. We were doing a Great Lives of Great Men tour today.

And then, in the next room, it kicked into a higher gear. The Colonel had been discussing something or other--Martha Washington, I think, since we were in her receiving room--when, apropos of nothing:

"Now, this business between Mr. Jefferson and a slave of his is NOT scientifically proven, and even if it was true, it doesn't change A WORD of what he wrote in THAT DOCUMENT!" the Colonel yelled, and pointed to a copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall.

Wait, what? Where did that come from? No one had mentioned Sally Hemmings at this point, and even if we had, it was the official position of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation--the people who own Monticello and the Colonel's employer--that Jefferson fathered at least one child with Sally.

The feeling in the room had shifted. When the Colonel asked for questions, one man raised his hands and asked why Jefferson had died bankrupt (quick answer: he loved spending money), something the Colonel had mentioned in his run-up to the explosion.

"I won't answer that here," he said. "Let's let the man remain solvent while we're under his roof."

Yep, we were definitely in the realm of hardcore subject love. The "Mr. Jefferson" cinched it for me; this guy had to be a graduate of the University of Virginia (ahem, sorry, "Mr. Jefferson's University") back in its all-male days. Nothing like seeing your idol, your model yanked down off his pedestal to make you defensive about him.

The Colonel gives a tour of Monticello that won't be available in a dozen years: the uncomplicated, brilliant genius of the Revolution. A guy who didn't fund the newspaper enemies of his own President (as TJ did while Washington's Secretary of State), a guy who didn't sleep with his slaves, and certainly not a guy who put his genius to work to avoid the more problematic aspects of owning other human beings. Those clever lazy susans I mentioned earlier? They let food and wine reach the table without requiring a single slave to appear in the room.

Sigh. It's been a difficult week for separating the man from his work (paging Roman Polanski and John Phillips). I'm ready to move on to James Madison, who's complicated for a whole other set of reasons.

We went to Monticello, part one

2009-09-16T14:31:00.004-04:00

Oh, you mean the other Monticello. The one on the back of the nickel? The most famous private residence in America? The house that looks like a single story but is actually two?

Yeah, we went there. More on that later. But on our trip to Canada at the beginning of August, we ran into this:

Is there any other president you'd want to evoke in naming your restaurant? Richard Nixon's California Cuisine? James K. Polk Salad Bar? Jefferson is an epicure, among the million other things he also is, and so this actually makes a little sense. The man had a massive wine collection--big enough to write about, 200 years after the fact. I remember learning as a child that Jefferson had introduced the tomato to America, eating a bunch of them to prove that they weren't poisonous (they are related to nightshade, after all). So a restaurant isn't too far off the mark.

What's interesting about this Monticello is its menu, which seems to be a mostly creole/cajun palate, something that surprised me. Two possible connections, though: Jefferson did make the Louisiana Purchase, and Jefferson was a Southerner through and through. No matter how aristocratically we may think of him now, he viewed himself as a Virginia planter (although plantation owner is more accurate) before anything else. His home reflects that; more soon on it.

Lions and Tigers and Henry Clay, oh my!

2009-09-07T13:42:00.005-04:00

I feel like we're stepping into the unknown. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson--sure, everyone knows those guys: patriots! statesmen! on money!

But James Madison seems like the end of the diving board--from this point, it's a long stretch to the next familiar president (Lincoln, although you might make a case for Jackson). And I feel, too, like we're about to head through a mysterious area of American history, that of post-Revolution to the Civil War. I know a little bit about this time period, but it's all leftovers from high school: the Missouri-Maine Compromise, the War of 1812, and, umm...umm...

One thing I had hoped this project might do was to create a sense of continuity to American history, a path from Washington to Obama that told a story about this country. Now that we're done with the exciting opening scenes, it's time to move into the ordinariness of everyday governing.

Towards that end, we're reading Garry Wills's James Madison. A short biography for a short president (oh, don't worry--that's only the first of many short jokes to come).

Hard at work, even on vacation.

2009-09-01T16:25:00.003-04:00

The American Falls on the left, Horseshoe Falls on the right, Jefferson in between, as seen from the Canadian side. Librarians: it is against the rules to take library books out of the country, or is that just rental cars?

"It was my understanding that Jefferson left the party a long time ago..."

2009-08-30T23:17:00.003-04:00

That's a paraphrase of what former vice-president Dick Cheney (and the first VP to shoot a guy since Aaron Burr, TJ's veep) said about former Secretary of State Colin Powell, discussing how Cheney didn't think Powell was really a Republican anymore. But the same could easily be said about Thomas Jefferson, the first Republican president. Compare this list of facts to what you know about today's Republican party; Thomas Jefferson

--loved the French. Drank French wines.

--spent government money on art (Houdon's sculpture of Washington in the Virginia capitol building).

--was, among his many accomplishments, proudest of (it's one of the few things listed on his self-designed tombstone) his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In fact, he

--founded the University of Virginia so that schools could teach free of religious influence.

--was a big fan of science, and used government money to fund the Lewis and Clark expedition.

--used powers not necessarily reserved for the Executive branch in order to make the Louisiana Purchase, circumventing the Constitution to do so (although he did draft an amendment that would have made it OK, time was ticking).

Now, this list is a touch biased. Parties evolve (I'm grateful that the Democrats are a far cry from Andrew Jackson, too). But it's interesting to see how political parties--which come into existence for the Adams-Jefferson battle of 1796--have evolved away from their origins. Jefferson might have been the first president to campaign on a platform that changed when faced with the realities of the office, but he wasn't the last.

Uncirculated Proofs

2009-08-26T13:58:00.006-04:00

Apparently, this is very difficult.

The people who design coins (who, if they're not called "numismatographers," should be) have hailed this Jefferson nickel as a masterpiece of the numismatographer's art. The reason most people on coins are in profile is that's because it's the easiest way to show someone--there's not nearly as much three-dimensionality as a head-on or three-quarters view.

That's got to be a metaphor for the biographer's art, right? It's easiest to present a flat version of your subject, tougher to make her/him more three-dimensional, to accept the difficulties in reconciling a lived life with ink on the page. It's easier to think of Jefferson as the architect not only of Monticello, but also of America, writing the Declaration of Independence. It's nice to think of him as the guy who started the University of Virginia as a public institution, a reaction to the church-influenced education he experienced at William and Mary. It's pleasant to imagine Jefferson waving goodbye to Lewis and Clark from the steps of his house, telling them to keep an eye out for mastodons while exploring the Louisiana Purchase.

That's the Jefferson I grew up with--he was my favorite president as a kid (a writer!), and one of my earliest memories is reading the text of the Declaration on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in DC. But we've learned more about Jefferson (well, "learned" probably isn't right--a lot of these things were discussed when he was vice-president and later president) as the years have gone on, making the man more complex, more rounded. The sheen is of that nickel now, but it still spends, and while there are numismatists who value highest the uncirculated proof, the pristine, shiny coin, I'm more interested in the story it tells in its movements.

Wrapping up Adams

2009-08-19T11:17:00.003-04:00

One of the things I'd like to do with this project is involve my local library as much as possible (this may get difficult later one, but I'll try as best I can). So even though I've got access to a university library and interlibrary loan, I'm still walking downtown and checking out books for two weeks. So, despite my Netflix account, when I checked out McCullough's book, I also put in a request at the local public library for the HBO miniseries based on it.

I was #91 in the line. It's a month and a half later, and I'm #66. At this rate, we might get to watch it during November (John Quincy Adams month).

I think that's a pretty good way of thinking about Adams; I've felt stuck with him. I'm partway through the Jefferson biography, and I keep comparing it to McCullough's book ("how can you just skip over his years in France with the Adamses like that?" I'll say). The man really seems to have dominated my conception of the early days of America in a way I wouldn't have expected. Washington, sure; Jefferson, of course. Those guys were important. But I'm reacting to Adams in the way I do with new information, turning it over and over in my head to try to find where it fits in the brain.

New Book!

2009-08-14T16:15:00.003-04:00

After our mammoth experience with John Adams, we're taking August easy (well, easier) with R. B. Bernstein's Thomas Jefferson, which, to judge a book by its jacket, seems to be exhaustive without being exhausting.

(Also: does titling biographies seem like the easiest job ever? I've reached the point already where something like Ellis's His Excellency, George Washington reads like a Dave Eggers or Sherman Alexie title.)

A little beach reading

2009-08-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

Even at the beach (Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, to be exact), I was reading David McCullough's John Adams. I alternated between that and Life and Style magazine, just to keep in the spirit of summer.

The election of 1800 is notable for being the first presidential campaign in which there was, well, a campaign (also for being the first time a sitting vice-president ran against a sitting president). Although neither candidate would actually campaign--that sort of thing was thought to be beneath them--the tabloids of the day certainly did enough tarring and smearing to make Bill O'Reilly proud.

Adams was a secret monarchist who wanted to be America's first king, they argued (much in the way Obama is a secret Kenyan-born socialist), and therefore couldn't be trusted with a second term. Jefferson, while not actively making these points, certainly didn't do anything to stop them, and in fact supported the anti-Adams, pro-Jefferson tabloids.

I suppose it's a nice sense of American continuity that we've always had a partisan press; that there's not much of a line connecting Philip Freneau and Glenn Beck (although Freneau could actually write well, including poetry; I shudder to think of Beck's verse). But at the same time, it's a little disappointing; one of those perils that comes with having a free press.

Presidential Rehab

2009-08-05T16:08:00.002-04:00

Do you recognize this man?

Why, it's Pope Linus, of course, the second pontiff, who ruled what must have been a pretty small group of Christians for about nine years (67-76). You'd be forgiven for not recognizing him; I mean, I went to Catholic school and took Mr. Mulvaney's Church History course, and I couldn't pick St. Linus out of a lineup.

John Adams, the Linus of America, suffered the same fate for a long time. I remember visiting the Denver Mint as a kid and buying souvenir coins in the gift shop. They sold coins with each president's portrait, and I decided to buy three. I bought Washington, because he was number one, and Jefferson, because he was my favorite president. Then, because he filled the gap in between, I bought Adams, the guy between numbers one and three.

So it went with Adams in popular culture. George Washington was the first president; Adams was the first vice-president (and the first to complain about how powerless the VP is). GW got elected twice, unanimously; JA is the first guy to lose a presidential election. Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase; JA signs the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. For a long time, he's a name on a list, a brief stop on the way between the important founding fathers.

This changes in 2001, when David McCullough publishes John Adams, his 751-page bio of America's first forgotten president. What's interesting about this isn't the fact that it's a success--as a New York Times points out, the book is "rebelling against the rebellion against the history of Great White Men"--but rather that it's taken so long for someone to do a really comprehensive reworking of Adams's reputation. Maybe the problem is too much information--after all, part of the mystery of Washington is Martha's destruction of their correspondence (Jefferson does the same when his wife dies, too), whereas John and Abagail Adams write each other (and everyone else) constantly. McCullough's got a lot of reading ahead of him (as he notes, the microfilm runs over five miles in length).

The result, though, of all this primary material and McCullough's willingness to wade through it all, is lively, engaging reading; I felt like I knew Washington a little bit better as a person at the end of June, but finishing John Adams felt like saying goodbye to a good friend. Ellis fleshed out Washington, but McCullough animates the Adamses--a remarkable family who we'll obviously return to later this year--with a vivacity that makes for a wonderful read.

But there's a dark side to this presidential rehab. We know that George W. Bush likes McCullough a lot--he gives him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006--and that Bush frequently invoked Harry S. Truman (another McCullough subject) in discussing how history would vindicate his presidency. Is is possible that, in reading about Adams, Bush thought some future biographer would explain away his failings and restore him to his believed rightful place in American history?

Weekend of Washington, Part Two

2009-07-13T15:05:00.001-04:00

I'd read in Ellis's book that Washington was 6'2", which is also my height (this hasn't worked out for me quite as well as it did for Washington, but being tall does have its advantages). And it's easy enough to read that someone's the same height as you and think "that's how tall I am." Not that exciting, really.

It's another thing entirely to go to Mount Vernon's musuem and come face-to-face (literally) with the Houdon bust of Washington--generally considered to be the best likeness of GW, carved from life. Looking at the bust, seeing the case's reflection of my eyes lined up with GW's eyes, I understood the physicality of the man in a way I hadn't before, and from now on, whenever something is my height, it's going to get described as "Washington-sized."

We had tried to go to Mount Vernon before, but ran into the following things when we arrived:

1. Rain heavy enough to make it a problem, even under the trees in the long line to enter the house itself.
2. A thousand tour buses (18, but still).
3. People ahead of us in line complaining about how they should get to go to the front of the line to enter the mansion since they're senior citizens.
4. Six thousand schoolkids (this may not be an exaggeration).

So, in one of those joint decisions that might be the reason we're still married, we bailed out of the line, went back to the visitor's center, and plunked down the extra cash to get year-long passes to Mount Vernon. It's the first time I've ever had a year-long pass to anywhere, and I'm inordinately pleased that it's Mount Vernon.

The next weekend, the day after our visit to the GW birthplace in Northern Neck (see previous post), we woke up bright and early and got out to Mount Vernon right when it opened. We skipped past the entrance line, flashing our passes (our photos are on the cards!), and made a beeline for the entrance to the mansion. As you can see, it was a much nicer day:

A quick wait to let a school group (they always win, don't they?) ahead of us, and we were in George and Martha's home. A few thoughts while touring the grounds:

1. Bright paint signified money, which was something Washington could display. So there are some rooms in Mount Vernon that are really green. Shockingly so.

2. For a place that was a private residence for a long time, Mount Vernon has an impressive collection of Washington's stuff. Part of this is due to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, one of the forerunners of historical preservation societies (and, as Seth Bruggeman points out, a way for women to write themselves into history in a time when they couldn't participate in it), and part of this is due to George Washington Parke Custis, GW's step-grandson, who kept his step-grandfather's stuff in a kind of museum at his other mansion--Arlington.

3. Among that stuff is Washington's campaign chest, which, given the length of the Revolutionary War, must have seen plenty of action, Washington's uncommon chair, and the bed Washington died in. After he died, Martha ordered that wing of the house sealed. She never entered it again, and retired to the third floor of the house, which is off limits to visitors, except during the winter months (annual pass!).

After touring the house, we strolled a short distance past stables and gardens and slave quarters (Mount Vernon is pretty up front about Washington and his slaves; they've got an advantage in the fact that GW freed his slaves in his will, the only president to do so; it'll be interesting to see how Monticello or Montpelier handle the same subject). After a while, we came up to the tomb of Washington--a crypt with George and Martha's marble coffins.

Whoever the other people around us were, they must have been high muckety-mucks, because the guards unlocked the gate to the crypt and opened it up for them. They then posed in the crypt, next to the coffins. I didn't have the chutzpah to sneak in there myself, but I did snap a picture of the open crypt. Imagine a zombie GW stepping out of it (six foot two, remember).

There's really not that long of a line between pilgrims on their way to Lourdes and Elizabeth and I on our way to Mount Vernon: struggles, admiration, a mix of the physical and spiritual. A peek at the relic-like devotion paid to a set of Washington's dentures in the Mount Vernon museum reveals as much, right down to the greatest sign I've ever seen in a museum: Please Refrain from Photographing the General's Dentures. It will be interesting to see how this devotion proceeds as we move on through history.

The Weekend of Washington, Part One

2009-07-06T09:20:00.007-04:00

Because I'm a glutton for history but not for punishment, we headed out on our Washington journey the weekend before July 4th; rumor has it that only fools and tourists make the journey on the holiday. So, on Saturday, with a bag of store-brand Cheddar Cheese Sun Chips (totally different texture; oddly unappealing), we pointed the car towards Northern Neck, the Land of Leaders.

(Note: Northern Neck (or Westmoreland County) doesn't actually call itself "The Land of Leaders," but it's not a bad idea. Washington was born there; Robert E. Lee next door (although in the plantation system, that's a few miles down the road. We passed a sign for the James Monroe birthplace, too. Maybe "The Land of Leaders of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries" doesn't look good on a souvenir Frisbee.)

After a short drive, we arrived at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument. As far as National Park Service sites go, it's fairly unassuming (although there's a great obelisk marking the entrance to the site, part of the convoluted history of memorialization there; more on that in a second). Small visitors center, separate gift shop. Living history exhibitions (although none when we visited, which was technically not long before closing).

But the location! Well chosen, Washingtons. Well chosen indeed. Here's a photo of me attempting to look noble on the deck of the visitors center, next to the very wide Popes Creek:

The fact that the weather was just about perfect helped, obviously, but it wouldn't have been a bad place to grow up. Except, of course, Washington didn't grow up here; he grew up at Ferry Farm. He left this site at the age of three, which raises the question: why all the fuss? When did we decide as a country that where you were born was for some reason a place of pilgrimage?

Historian Seth Bruggeman argues in his book Here, George Washington Was Born that the Popes Creek plantation is where this happened. The book is, as we like to say, academically dense--Bruggeman's discussed medieval object fetishism, the Colonial Revival, and how dollhouses create a domestic paradigm, and I'm only on the second chapter--but his essential argument is this: that when Washington's step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis sails up the Potomac with some friends in 1815 and puts a stone engraved with the words "Here, George Washington Was Born" on what he thinks is the site of Washington's birth, he establishes the historical/biographical site in America.

What's especially interesting is that in 1932, the park builds the Memorial House--a replica of a wealthy planter's house, furnished accordingly, on the site of GW's birth. The great thing about this is twofold: one, the Washingtons weren't in that class, and two, it's not on the actual site where Washington was born. That would be what was called "Building X," not too far from the Memorial House. Here's a photo of half of it, or, more accurately, half of the oyster shell outline of the house's foundations:

In the background is Memorial House; close, but not quite.

I was reminded of the Lincoln Birthplace in Kentucky, which takes object fetishism to its grandest heights: a neoclassical temple dropped over a log cabin. The Park Service will tell you that the cabin isn't actually the cabin that Lincoln was born in, although it toured the country at the turn of the twentieth century just as such. The Washington birthplace seems like a more honest version of that, and, as Bruggeman seems to be arguing, a microcosm of historical preservation in the United States, mistakes and all.

The next day: Mount Vernon.

July 2009

2009-06-23T15:52:00.004-04:00

Only a week until our next book starts, and while there's plenty more to say about George, it's time to tee up the next book, which, it will come as no surprise to discover, is David McCullough's John Adams.

It's a bio to kill big bugs with, so get ready.

Myth-Making

2009-06-15T08:14:00.002-04:00

George Washington is successful, in part, because he's tall.

At least, according to Joseph Ellis, he is. Apparently, since Washington towered over a lot of the Continental Congress and tended to keep quiet, they gave him command of the Continental Army. Oh, sure, there are other reasons--the need to bring Virginia's land-owning class into the fray, for example, and the fact that Washington is already pretty well known for his military exploits in the French-Indian War. But Washington's six feet and two inches of apparently impressive stature helps him get the job.

This actually makes sense, given the amount of self-creation that Washington indulges in; he talks his way into a officership in the French-Indian War. He inherits and marries his way into the land-owning class. He knows that silence can speak louder than words. He seems rigidly fixed on self-improvement--one of the only early writings we have of his is a (perhaps copied) list of rules for better living.

And the weird thing about Washington is that all this works--he does become a pretty solid military leader (even if he does lose more battles than he wins), he's the go-to landowner in Virginia (and manages his estates so well that he's one of the few founding fathers not to die broke). In an odd way, he's not just the perfect guy to be president; he's the perfect guy to create the office of president.

We indulge in this myth-making about GW, too. He has wooden teeth, he threw a dollar across the Potomac, he stood in the front of the boat as it crossed the icy Delaware (um, no; it would tip). Maybe that's because there are so many gaps in the Washington story that we have to fill it in with speculation, or maybe it's because so much time has passed since he walked this earth that he's now a face on the dollar bill, a day off in February. It certainly makes this possible (oddly NSFW):

Imagine that with, say, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan.

Soon: we answer the burning question: What kind of cookies did the Washingtons eat?

Primary Decisions

2009-06-08T08:15:00.003-04:00

According the Library of Congress catalog (which got its start with a president's library, although we'll discuss that in a few months), there are 1,134 biographies of George Washington. Washington's own papers run to a few dozen collected volumes. With so many choices, how do we choose a single biography to read? Can we possibly encompass the width and breadth of 43 presidents' lives in single books when we could easily spend our lives reading about just one?

Well, no. So we've got to pick one. In some cases, the choice is easy, thanks to a recent major biography (David McCullough's John Adams, for example. Or there just isn't much written about the president (William Henry Harrison, I'm looking in your direction). Sometimes we'll let what we can get at the library make the decision for us.

But Washington--well, that's tricky. Lots about him. After some reflection (and digging around Amazon), we've settled on Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency, George Washington. On the surface, it's got lots going for it--Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his writings on the Founding Fathers, the almost-four-years-old book is still in Amazon's top 3,000 (not to mention the best-selling bio of GW on the Kindle), and there's even a bit of scandal about Ellis's claims of Washington's relationship with his neighbor Sally Fairfax. But scratch the surface a little, and there's something interesting going on with the author, too; something that might reveal a little about why and how biography gets written.

"I do solemnly swear..."

2009-06-05T17:27:00.002-04:00

The idea is a relatively simple one; in 42 months, we'll perform a ritual. Fast food restuarants will offer a free chicken sandwich or donut when you come in with your "I Voted" sticker. A phalanx of senior citizens will look up your name in their books. You'll stand in a booth and mark a bubble, or punch a hole, or (god forbid) use a touchscreen, and you'll cast your vote for somebody--Barack Obama or his opponent--to be president.

Forty-three men have been president in the 233 years of the United States; some good, some bad, some forgettable. One was president for 13 years. One was president for 32 days. They've ranged between 5'4" and 6'4". One weighed 332 pounds. They've all been men, and until this year, they had all been white men.

So let's do some Old School History here. Let's dig into the Lives of Great Men and see what we can learn about them, and about the office, and about the country they ran. Let's see who made it better, who made it worse, and who just watered the plants for four years.

Here's the plan: one biography a month, with the occasional doubling up to keep on schedule. We start with the guy on the dollar bill and we end on the guy in the Oval Office. Along the way, we learn a little about how history's written and how biographies change. Read along!