Tag Archives: US Presidents

George Washington – early life

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George Washington, the first president of the US, was born on 22 February 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, where his father, Augustine, was a leading planter in the area. Augustine’s first wife died in 1729, leaving him two sons, Lawrence and Augustine, Jr., and a daughter, Jane. Augustine, Sr. soon married Mary Ball and had six children, George being the eldest. Washington’s mother was wealthy in her own right, and by all accounts, a demanding, self-centered and formidable woman. In addition to inheriting her strong health and disposition to endure great hardships, George most likely inherited her temper, which he struggled his whole life to control.

George WashingtonBy 1738, the family had moved to a plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia where George spent much of his youth. However, this period remains the least documented and understood part of his life. Many of the widely accepted fables of George’s youthful physical strength, honesty, and piety stem from Washington’s first biographer, “Parson” Weems.

Education

The education of a son of a wealthy planter normally included (as it did his older half-brothers) English grammar and arithmetic. Adolescent years would have included instruction in geometry, geography, booking keeping and surveying, culminating in a year or two studying abroad in England. Unfortunately, when George reached the age of eleven, his father died, and George’s formal education ended. From what little we do know of his education, Washington excelled in mathematics and surveying. As George grew into his teens, he found it increasingly difficult to tolerate his domineering mother, so he spent most of his time away from home by actively pursuing the study of surveying or spending a large part of his time with his step-brothers, especially Lawrence.

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Mary Todd Lincoln – a summary

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Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had four children – all but one predeceased Mary. But before meeting Mary Todd, Lincoln was almost engaged to another Mary. Among Lincoln’s papers can be found three letters written to Mary Owens.  Mary was the daughter of Nathanial Owens, a plantation owner from Green County, Kentucky.  She had a sister who lived in New Salem, Illinois, and Mary paid a visit there in 1833.

Mary Owens – ‘in want of teeth’

Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln had met Mary during that visit in 1833, and when her sister planned a trip home three years later, she posed a question for Lincoln.  She asked him if he would marry her sister, Mary, if she came home with her.  Lincoln, in jest, said that he would.  He regretted his words when Mary Owens arrived in Springfield as a woman engaged to be married—to Abraham Lincoln.

Not only was Lincoln shocked that he had been taken seriously, the Mary Owens of 1836 was not the same woman he recalled from 1833.  In a letter to a friend, he described her as ‘…over-sized, weather beaten, and in want of teeth.’  However, Lincoln had given his word that he would marry the woman and determined that he would find some good in her.  He decided that she was intelligent and had a handsome face, if not pretty.

Nonetheless, he wrote three letters to her discouraging the marriage.  In the last, dated 7 May 1837, he tells her that he is unhappy living in Springfield, Illinois and discourages her from moving there.  He tells her that he cannot provide the kind of life she was accustomed to and that the hardship such a life would bring would make her unhappy.  He concluded by telling her, ‘If it suits you best not to answer this, farewell – a long life and a merry one to you.’  She didn’t answer – it was the last of their correspondence.

Mary Ann Todd

Mary Todd LincolnLincoln seemed destined to marry above the station into which he had been born.  In 1839, a young woman named Mary Ann Todd moved to Springfield.  Her father was a slaveholder named Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky.  Mary’s mother, Eliza Parker Todd, had died and Mary did not get along with her new stepmother, Elizabeth Humphries Todd.  Mary had come to live with her sister, Elizabeth Edwards, one of six siblings.  Her father and Elizabeth had nine more children together.

(Picture: Mary Todd Lincoln in about 1846, photograph taken by Mathew Brady).

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The Inauguration of John F Kennedy

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On 20 January 1961, despite deep snow and plunging temperatures, as many as 20,000 people converged on Capitol Hill in Washington, all eager to bear witness to history in the making – the inauguration of John F Kennedy, the 35th President of the Unites States.

The American Camelot

John F KennedyTo all those huddled against the biting cold, and many millions besides, John Fitzgerald Kennedy represented all that was new and exciting about their country.  JFK and Jackie (who had given birth to the couple’s first son, John Jr, just two months previously) brought glamour, refinement and culture to the White House that had become sober and dull under the grandfatherly President Dwight D Eisenhower.  For many, Kennedy’s inauguration heralded a bright new dawn for American politics. At just 43 years of age, he was the youngest man ever to be elected President.  He was also the first Roman Catholic. With youth, charisma and widespread popularity on his side, the future seemed bright.

In fact, so intertwined was Kennedy to this sense of national well-being that his time in office became known as the American Camelot.

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The Assassination of John F Kennedy – a summary

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It’s become a cliche but people who remember John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, can usually say exactly what they were doing when they first heard the shocking news. It was a defining moment of the second half of the twentieth century.

On 21 November 1963, President Kennedy, accompanied by the First Lady, travelled to Texas, where he was scheduled to make a number of appearances in a bid to drum up support for the Democratic Party prior to the 1964 general election.

Not everyone, however, was convinced of the wisdom of such a journey. Some White House officials, worried that the President would receive a hostile reception from voters in what was a staunchly Republican State, advised against it.  But characteristically, Kennedy rebuffed their concerns, insisting that a trip to ‘nut country’ was necessary. He reportedly said to Jackie: ‘if somebody wants to shoot me, […] nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?’

22 November 1963

The following day, 22 November 1963, at 12.30pm, President Kennedy was travelling in an open top car through the streets of Dallas when three loud rifle shots rang through the air, apparently shot from the sixth floor of the nearby Book Depository building. According to official reports, the first of these bullets missed its mark, while the second penetrated the back of the President’s neck. Kennedy’s steel-boned back brace which he wore to alleviate his constant pain held Kennedy in a upright position, despite his wound – allowing the final, fatal shot to strike the back of his head. (Pictured, President Kennedy with the First Lady, shortly before his assassination, 22 November 1963. Click on image to enlarge).

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The Gettysburg Address – a summary

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The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1 – 3 July 1863, was the biggest battle of the American Civil War, in American history, and indeed in the western hemisphere. At the end of it, Union forces, led by General George Meade, emerged victorious but in doing so paid a heavy price – 23,000 men killed or wounded, while the forces of the Confederacy, led by General Robert E Lee, had lost over 28,000 men, killed or wounded, and were forced into retreat. Most of the dead lay in shallow graves; many not buried at all.

Of these 51,000 men, 7,963 Americans lost their lives during the three days of battle at Gettysburg.

‘A few appropriate remarks’

Shortly after the battle, seventeen acres of land were purchased to establish the Soldiers’ National Cemetery of Gettysburg where the Union dead were moved from their shallow graves to more honorable places of rest. The mammoth task of reinterment was only half done when, four and a half months after the battle, the new cemetery was dedicated on Thursday, 19 November 1863. The principle speech, lasting over two hours, was delivered by the former US secretary of state, Edward Everett. Following Everett, came the President, Abraham Lincoln, invited as an afterthought to deliver ‘a few appropriate remarks’, or, as listed in the program for the event, ‘Dedicatory Remarks’.

Lincoln’s speech, in contrast to Everett’s marathon, consisted of only ten sentences, 272 words, and lasted barely two minutes. In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln summarized the principles of human equality as declared in the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”), and expressed the Civil War in terms of a struggle for “a new birth of freedom”.

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Joseph Patrick Kennedy – father to Jack

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Joseph Patrick Kennedy, father to future US president, John F Kennedy, was born on Boston, Massachusetts on 6 September 1888.  He was the eldest child and only surviving son of prominent Boston-Irish businessman and politician, PJ Kennedy, and his wife, Mary Hickey.  Having received his early education at the Catholic Xaverian School, Joe transferred to the prestigious Boston Latin School at the age of thirteen.  Despite an uninspiring academic record, he was accepted to Harvard in 1908 and graduated in 1912.

Business

Highly ambitious from an early age, Joe began his career at the Columbia Trust Company, a banking institution which was controlled by his father. The young man’s exceptional business acumen came to the fore a few years later when Columbia, Boston’s sole Irish-owned bank, became the target of a hostile takeover bid by one of its rivals.  Recognising that the only way to fend off the takeover threat was to offer Columbia’s shareholders a better deal, Kennedy set about raising enough finance to do so.  His success in this endeavour saw him becoming, at the age of twenty-five, the country’s youngest ever bank president.

In October 1914, Joe married his long-time sweetheart, Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of another prominent Boston-Irish politician.  The couple would go on to have nine children, four boys and five girls.

Meanwhile, his business career continued apace.  During World War One, Joe worked as an assistant manager at a major shipyard, supervising the production of warships and other equipment critical to the war effort.  He later branched out into stock market trading, and avoided catastrophe by cashing in his investments before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.  Having succeeded in his stated aim of becoming a millionaire by the time he was thirty-five, Kennedy’s later business ventures, which included whiskey importation and movie production, only added to his growing fortune.

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The History and Design of the US Electoral College

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The 2012 US election is over and Barack Obama has won a second term in office but exactly how does the democratic system work that allows US citizens to choose their leaders. The history and design of the US Electoral College is designed to determine the next president of the US every four years. Many people in and outside the US have the misconception that the sheer popular vote decides the presidency, when in reality it is determined by a magical number of votes in the Electoral College (which are indeed determined by the popular vote).

So how did such an integral part of the US’s democratic system come to be?

Origins of the Electoral College

The Electoral College was conceived along with the founding principles of United States governance in 1787 with the drafting of the US Constitution. Drafters of the now infamous document were concerned with how US citizens would vote for presidential candidates. There were many factors to consider on this subject. First of all, at that time there were 13 colonies, all of which vastly varied in size and population density, not to mention political leanings. Some people worried that the highly populated state would have much more power to elect officials than smaller states with more sparse populations. Also drafters of the Constitution worried that if left to a popular vote, a large portion of the electorate might not be “educated” enough to choose the proper candidate.

Thus the Electoral College was born as a way to mitigate the population discrepancies between states and to prevent the “masses” from determining an election. The conditions for the Electoral College were set forth in Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution were they remain honored to this day.

How the Electoral College Works

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Ulysses S Grant – a summary

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Hiram Ulysses Grant earned the name Ulysses S. Grant when it was incorrectly used for his nomination into the United States Military Academy at West Point.  He adopted it and was known to classmates as “Uncle Sam.”  Grant graduated from West Point in 1843 and later joined the ranks of West Point graduates who fought during the American Civil War.

But Ulysses S Grant’s claim to military distinction did not come as quickly or as easily as it did for many of his colleagues.  He graduated in the lower percentile of his class and was assigned to quartermaster duty in spite of his obvious skill as a cavalryman.  His assignments carried him across the growing United States, at times leaving behind his wife, Julia Boggs Dent, whom he married in 1848.

Grant was promoted to captain in 1854.  But later that year, in July, he resigned without explanation after a confrontation with a superior officer.

Ulysses S Grant’s post-military life can only be described as a failure.  He was unsuccessful at every attempt at business or employment, including work at the family leather shop in Galena, Illinois.

Civil War

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The Early Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Born Brookline, Mass. (83 Beals Street) May 29, 1917

With these few simple words, handwritten on a small piece of notecard, Rose Kennedy recorded the birth of her second son – a handsome blue-eyed boy who, although named after his maternal grandfather, would become known as ‘Jack’.

As expected, the family’s fortunes had continued to improve in the three years since the Fitzgerald-Kennedy marriage.  By the time of Jack’s birth, the family lived a comfortable upper-middle-class existence in the Boston suburb of Brookline.  Over the years, Joe would successfully try his hand at a number of business opportunities, which would eventually include stock market speculation, movie producing and liquor importation.  By 1927, the family had moved to the exclusive suburb of Riverdale, New York. Continue reading →

Jacqueline Kennedy – a summary

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Born on 28 July 1929 in Southampton, New York, Jacqueline Kennedy, nee Lee Bouvier, was the eldest of two daughters.  Her parents were John ‘Black Jack’ Bouvier, a successful Wall Street stockbroker and Janet Norton Lee.  The couple divorced in 1940, when Jacqueline was ten years old.  Her mother went on to marry the wealthy businessman, Hugh D Auchincloss, with whom she had two more children.

A bright child, Jacqueline enjoyed reading and did well at school.  One of her teachers described her as “a darling child, the prettiest little girl, very clever, very artistic, and full of the devil.”  In addition to taking lessons in French and ballet, Jacqueline was also an accomplished equestrienne and her love of horses endured long into adulthood.

Jacqueline’s teenage years were spent at an exclusive boarding school in Connecticut.  Graduating in 1947, she continued her education at Vassar College, where she read French, history, art and literature.  Two years later, in 1949, Jacqueline participated in a study abroad programme, which saw her relocating to France to attend the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne.  Returning to the United States in 1950, she completed her education at the George Washington University in Washington DC.

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