James A. Garfield

Gerald R. Ford

Theodore Roosevelt

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."  Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer. He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.  Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars. As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.  In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.Thus far, he had followed his predecessor's policies, but he soon developed his own. He presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. The program, Truman wrote, "symbolizes for me my assumption of the office of President in my own right." It became known as the Fair Deal. Dangers and crises marked the foreign scene as Truman campaigned successfully in 1948. In foreign affairs he was already providing his most effective leadership.  In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name--the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe. When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.  In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, "complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it." A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia.  Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88, he died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.
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He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. Studious and industrious, Polk was graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson.  In the House of Representatives, Polk was a chief lieutenant of Jackson in his Bank war. He served as Speaker between 1835 and 1839, leaving to become Governor of Tennessee. Until circumstances raised Polk's ambitions, he was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for Vice President in 1844. Both Martin Van Buren, who had been expected to win the Democratic nomination for President, and Henry Clay, who was to be the Whig nominee, tried to take the expansionist issue out of the campaign by declaring themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk, however, publicly asserted that Texas should be "re-annexed" and all of Oregon "re-occupied."   The aged Jackson, correctly sensing that the people favored expansion, urged the choice of a candidate committed to the Nation's "Manifest Destiny." This view prevailed at the Democratic Convention, where Polk was nominated on the ninth ballot. "Who is James K. Polk?" Whigs jeered. Democrats replied Polk was the candidate who stood for expansion. He linked the Texas issue, popular in the South, with the Oregon question, attractive to the North. Polk also favored acquiring California. Even before he could take office, Congress passed a joint resolution offering annexation to Texas. In so doing they bequeathed Polk the possibility of war with Mexico, which soon severed diplomatic relations. In his stand on Oregon, the President seemed to be risking war with Great Britain also. The 1844 Democratic platform claimed the entire Oregon area, from the California boundary northward to a latitude of 54'40', the southern boundary of Russian Alaska. Extremists proclaimed "Fifty-four forty or fight," but Polk, aware of diplomatic realities, knew that no course short of war was likely to get all of Oregon. Happily, neither he nor the British wanted a war. He offered to settle by extending the Canadian boundary, along the 49th parallel, from the Rockies to the Pacific. When the British minister declined, Polk reasserted the American claim to the entire area. Finally, the British settled for the 49th parallel, except for the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The treaty was signed in 1846. Acquisition of California proved far more difficult. Polk sent an envoy to offer Mexico up to $20,000,000, plus settlement of damage claims owed to Americans, in return for California and the New Mexico country. Since no Mexican leader could cede half his country and still stay in power, Polk's envoy was not received. To bring pressure, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the disputed area on the Rio Grande. To Mexican troops this was aggression, and they attacked Taylor's forces. Congress declared war and, despite much Northern opposition, supported the military operations. American forces won repeated victories and occupied Mexico City. Finally, in 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California in return for $15,000,000 and American assumption of the damage claims. President Polk added a vast area to the United States, but its acquisition precipitated a bitter quarrel between the North and the South over expansion of slavery. Polk, leaving office with his health undermined from hard work, died in June 1849.  Return to Last Page

"He is tall and well formed. His dress plain and in the old style.... His manner was quiet and dignified. From the frank, honest expression of his eye ... I think he well deserves the encomium passed upon him by the great Jefferson, who said, 'Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out there would not be a spot on it.' " Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1758, Monroe attended the College of William and Mary, fought with distinction in the Continental Army, and practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
As a youthful politician, he joined the anti-Federalists in the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, and in 1790, an advocate of Jeffersonian policies, was elected United States Senator. As Minister to France in 1794-1796, he displayed strong sympathies for the French cause; later, with Robert R. Livingston, he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. His ambition and energy, together with the backing of President Madison, made him the Republican choice for the Presidency in 1816. With little Federalist opposition, he easily won re-election in 1820.  Monroe made unusually strong Cabinet choices, naming a Southerner, John C. Calhoun, as Secretary of War, and a northerner, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State. Only Henry Clay's refusal kept Monroe from adding an outstanding Westerner.  Early in his administration, Monroe undertook a goodwill tour. At Boston, his visit was hailed as the beginning of an "Era of Good Feelings." Unfortunately these "good feelings" did not endure, although Monroe, his popularity undiminished, followed nationalist policies. Across the facade of nationalism, ugly sectional cracks appeared. A painful economic depression undoubtedly increased the dismay of the people of the Missouri Territory in 1819 when their application for admission to the Union as a slave state failed. An amended bill for gradually eliminating slavery in Missouri precipitated two years of bitter debate in Congress. The Missouri Compromise bill resolved the struggle, pairing Missouri as a slave state with Maine, a free state, and barring slavery north and west of Missouri forever.   In foreign affairs Monroe proclaimed the fundamental policy that bears his name, responding to the threat that the more conservative governments in Europe might try to aid Spain in winning back her former Latin American colonies. Monroe did not begin formally to recognize the young sister republics until 1822, after ascertaining that Congress would vote appropriations for diplomatic missions. He and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wished to avoid trouble with Spain until it had ceded the Floridas, as was done in 1821. Great Britain, with its powerful navy, also opposed reconquest of Latin America and suggested that the United States join in proclaiming "hands off." Ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison counseled Monroe to accept the offer, but Secretary Adams advised, "It would be more candid ... to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war."  Monroe accepted Adams's advice. Not only must Latin America be left alone, he warned, but also Russia must not encroach southward on the Pacific coast. ". . . the American continents," he stated, "by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power." Some 20 years after Monroe died in 1831, this became known as the Monroe Doctrine.  Return to Last Page

More nearly than any of his predecessors, Andrew Jackson was elected by popular vote; as President he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man. Born in a backwoods settlement in the Carolinas in 1767, he received sporadic education. But in his late teens he read law for about two years, and he became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. Fiercely jealous of his honor, he engaged in brawls, and in a duel killed a man who cast an unjustified slur on his wife Rachel.
Jackson prospered sufficiently to buy slaves and to build a mansion, the Hermitage, near Nashville. He was the first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson became a national hero when he defeated the British at New Orleans.
In 1824 some state political factions rallied around Jackson; by 1828 enough had joined "Old Hickory" to win numerous state elections and control of the Federal administration in Washington. In his first Annual Message to Congress, Jackson recommended eliminating the Electoral College. He also tried to democratize Federal officeholding. Already state machines were being built on patronage, and a New York Senator openly proclaimed "that to the victors belong the spoils. . . . " Jackson took a milder view. Decrying officeholders who seemed to enjoy life tenure, he believed Government duties could be "so plain and simple" that offices should rotate among deserving applicants. As national politics polarized around Jackson and his opposition, two parties grew out of the old Republican Party--the Democratic Republicans, or Democrats, adhering to Jackson; and the National Republicans, or Whigs, opposing him. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and other Whig leaders proclaimed themselves defenders of popular liberties against the usurpation of Jackson. Hostile cartoonists portrayed him as King Andrew I. Behind their accusations lay the fact that Jackson, unlike previous Presidents, did not defer to Congress in policy-making but used his power of the veto and his party leadership to assume command. The greatest party battle centered around the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation but virtually a Government-sponsored monopoly. When Jackson appeared hostile toward it, the Bank threw its power against him. Clay and Webster, who had acted as attorneys for the Bank, led the fight for its recharter in Congress. "The bank," Jackson told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!" Jackson, in vetoing the recharter bill, charged the Bank with undue economic privilege. His views won approval from the American electorate; in 1832 he polled more than 56 percent of the popular vote and almost five times as many electoral votes as Clay. Jackson met head-on the challenge of John C. Calhoun, leader of forces trying to rid themselves of a high protective tariff.  When South Carolina undertook to nullify the tariff, Jackson ordered armed forces to Charleston and privately threatened to hang Calhoun. Violence seemed imminent until Clay negotiated a compromise: tariffs were lowered and South Carolina dropped nullification. In January of 1832, while the President was dining with friends at the White House, someone whispered to him that the Senate had rejected the nomination of Martin Van Buren as Minister to England. Jackson jumped to his feet and exclaimed, "By the Eternal! I'll smash them!" So he did. His favorite, Van Buren, became Vice President, and succeeded to the Presidency when "Old Hickory" retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June 1845.   Return to Last Page

At the 1896 Republican Convention, in time of depression, the wealthy Cleveland businessman Marcus Alonzo Hanna ensured the nomination of his friend William McKinley as "the advance agent of prosperity." The Democrats, advocating the "free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold"--which would have mildly inflated the currency--nominated William Jennings Bryan.
While Hanna used large contributions from eastern Republicans frightened by Bryan's views on silver, McKinley met delegations on his front porch in Canton, Ohio. He won by the largest majority of popular votes since 1872.
Born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, McKinley briefly attended Allegheny College, and was teaching in a country school when the Civil War broke out. Enlisting as a private in the Union Army, he was mustered out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunteers. He studied law, opened an office in Canton, Ohio, and married Ida Saxton, daughter of a local banker.
At 34, McKinley won a seat in Congress. His attractive personality, exemplary character, and quick intelligence enabled him to rise rapidly. He was appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Robert M. La Follette, Sr., who served with him, recalled that he generally "represented the newer view," and "on the great new questions .. was generally on the side of the public and against private interests."
During his 14 years in the House, he became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving his name to the measure enacted in 1890. The next year he was elected Governor of Ohio, serving two terms.
When McKinley became President, the depression of 1893 had almost run its course and with it the extreme agitation over silver. Deferring action on the money question, he called Congress into special session to enact the highest tariff in history.
In the friendly atmosphere of the McKinley Administration, industrial combinations developed at an unprecedented pace. Newspapers caricatured McKinley as a little boy led around by "Nursie" Hanna, the representative of the trusts. However, McKinley was not dominated by Hanna; he condemned the trusts as "dangerous conspiracies against the public good."
Not prosperity, but foreign policy, dominated McKinley's Administration. Reporting the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba, newspapers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffering acutely. Public indignation brought pressure upon the President for war. Unable to restrain Congress or the American people, McKinley delivered his message of neutral intervention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba.
In the 100-day war, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico.
"Uncle Joe" Cannon, later Speaker of the House, once said that McKinley kept his ear so close to the ground that it was full of grasshoppers. When McKinley was undecided what to do about Spanish possessions other than Cuba, he toured the country and detected an imperialist sentiment. Thus the United States annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
In 1900, McKinley again campaigned against Bryan. While Bryan inveighed against imperialism, McKinley quietly stood for "the full dinner pail."
His second term, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later.
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Johnson was born on Dec. 29, 1808, in Raleigh, N. C., the younger of two sons. His father was a porter who died in 1811 after saving a man from drowning. His mother supported the family by spinning and weaving cloth in their Raleigh cottage. At the age of 14, Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor.
Already showing signs of the ambition that drove him all his life, Johnson learned the basics of reading and writing from the foreman of his shop and trained himself as a public speaker. By the time he was 16, Johnson was restless and dissatisfied with the limits his apprenticeship placed on his life. In 1827 he moved with his family, finally settling in Greeneville, in the eastern Tennessee hill country, where he opened his own tailor shop. In the same year he married Eliza McCardle, who furthered his education and helped him prosper in his business. In Greeneville, Johnson's personal magnetism, native ability, and powerful will made him a leader of the town's younger skilled artisans. In the social ferment of the late 1820's and early 1830's, when Andrew Jackson and his advisers both capitalized on and promoted a new spirit of egalitarianism, Johnson and his friends were inspired to try to replace the town's traditional political leaders. In 1829, Johnson and several other artisans were elected to the Greeneville town council, and in 1831 he was elected mayor. Attracted by the anti-aristocratic rhetoric of Jackson and his political intimates, Johnson and his friends allied with hundreds of likeminded budding political organizations to form the new Democratic Party.
The spirit of democracy meshed well with Johnson's own resentments and ambitions. Poor in his youth and still a tailor without pretensions of social rank, he stressed the egalitarian, anti-aristocratic strain of Jacksonian democracy, as well as its distrust of government at all levels. An active, powerful government, insisted Johnson and other radical Jacksonians, was subject to manipulationby the rich and powerful. He maintained that the Constitution should be construed strictly and opposed national government encroachments on "states' rights." But unlike many Democrats, he urged that similar principles be applied to the state governments. This led him into conflict with the western Tennessee Democratic leaders--slaveholders who dominated the party.
Johnson was elected to the state legislature in 1835, 1839, and 1841, and to the U.S. Congress in 1843. He expressed his constitutional principles by voting consistently against the tariff, internal improvements, higher salaries for government employees, or any other "extravagance." Gerrymandered out of Congress in 1852 by a Whig legislature, he won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1853, finally gaining control of the party from his Tennessee opponents. He barely defeated the Whig candidate and served two terms from 1853 to 1857, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Although Johnson himself owned a few slaves and loyally defended slavery and "states' rights," his relations with proslavery Democratic leaders were strained. Within the framework of Tennessee state politics, Johnson was the spokesman of the nonslaveholding interests of the state. In the Senate his most treasured proposal was the Homestead Bill, a measure that would have given 160 acres (65 ha) of western land to anyone who would settle on and cultivate it for five years. Such a program would have precluded the large plantations associated with slavery. Southern congressmen opposed it bitterly, while the new, antislavery Republican party of the North favored it.
These tensions were exacerbated in 1860, when Johnson cooperated with Tennessee Democrats who favored Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. Douglas had alienated most Southern Democrats by refusing to endorse their right to take slaves anywhere in the western territories. But Johnson himself had slight commitment to the expansion of slavery there, and he hoped that he would get Douglas's support as a compromise presidential candidate if he and his enemies fought to a stalemate. When the struggle led to the division of the Democratic party, Johnson supported the pro-Southern nominee, John C. Breckinridge. His dalliance with Douglas, however, had already injured him with most Southern Democrats.
Johnson's association with the Democrats ended completely when he worked to prevent Tennessee from joining the secession movement after Lincoln's election in 1860. Allying with pro-Union Whigs, for several months he fought old Democratic enemies to a standstill. But when war came, western and central Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the South. Only eastern Tennessee held out, and Johnson with it--the only Southern senator to refuse to go with his state. Johnson's position, which forced him and his family to flee Tennessee, made him a hero in the North. In Congress he came into close contact with Republicans and prowar Democrats, now cooperating in the so-called Union party. When Union forces gained control of central Tennessee in 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor.
Lincoln hoped that Johnson would be able to create a new civilian government loyal to the Union, but the attempt met with scant success. The few Unionists were badly divided between those who hoped to retain slavery and conciliate pro-Confederates and those who wished to abolish slavery and punish traitors. Johnson took a position in between. While he urged bold steps to restore civil government, both groups held back, convinced that most Tennesseans would not cooperate until Confederate troops still in the state were crushed, which did not occur until December 1864. Within three months Tennesseans held a convention, framed a new state constitution, and elected a new governor and congressman.
As Lincoln's running mate on the Union party ticket, Johnson was elected in November 1864. Ill at the time of the inauguration in March 1865, Johnson made the mistake of fortifying himself with whiskey before the ceremonies. His inaugural address was rambling and almost incoherent. The humiliating experience--made doubly painful by his chronic insecurity--lent apparent substance to rumors of alcoholism that plagued him for the rest of his life. The wound was just beginning to heal when, on April 15, 1865, Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination.
As soon as he became president, Johnson faced the knottiest problem of the post-Civil War era--formulating a policy for restoring the Union. Difficult for Lincoln, this task was even harder for Johnson. Lincoln was a Northerner with an intimate knowledge of Northern attitudes toward slavery, race, and the South, as well as with the sentiments and necessities of the Union party. He shared the mixed feelings of racism and humanitarian concern for ex-slaves that characterized most Northerners, as well as their conflicting desires for a quick return to normality and for fundamental changes that would guarantee the security of the Union. Johnson, on the other hand, was a Southerner. Toward blacks he displayed alternately a sympathetic paternalism and a contemptuous hostility. He understood the politics of the South better than any Northern Republican, but he had no real feeling for the North, and he was especially ignorant of the balance of forces in the Union party.
A strict constructionist who believed in limited government, Johnson found federal domination of the people of the South extremely distasteful. Determined to reestablish state governments in the South as quickly as possible, he decided to follow a modified version of the program that Lincoln had developed during the war. This provided for the speedy framing of new state constitutions abolishing slavery and the election of new state officers. He also added requirements that the new states ratify the 13th Amendment, repudiate Confederate debts, and nullify secession ordinances. All this was to be done under the temporary wartime authority of the president as commander in chief of the armed forces. When the states met his conditions, he would recognize their restoration to the Union, and the war would be officially over. Southerners met his conditions quickly. When Congress met in December 1865, he thought the job was almost complete.
To a Southern Unionist the plan seemed excellent, but it revealed Johnson's ignorance of the sentiments of most Northerners. Johnson's program left the decision of how to cope with emancipation completely in the hands of white Southerners. Northerners justifiably feared that freedmen's basic rights of citizenship would not be recognized, and considered it unsafe to restore the Union until that discrimination was ended. Therefore the Republican majorities in Congress refused to agree that the Southern states were ready to assume their rights and did not seat the Southern congressional representatives. This strained Johnson's relations with his party and convinced him that the entire federal system, with its strict limits on national power, was in danger. When Congress passed laws to protect the rights of the ex-slaves in 1866, he vetoed them as unconstitutional and broke with the Republican Party completely rather than endorse a new amendment to the Constitution granting blacks the rights of citizenship. From this point forward Johnson's relations with the congressional majority deteriorated. He questioned Congress's right to legislate without the presence of Southern representatives, and he tacitly encouraged Southern opposition to congressional laws.
Finally, in 1867, Congress set aside the governments Johnson had created in the South and put Southerners under military supervision until new governments based on equal civil and political rights were established. To Johnson this marked the total subversion of the federal system, and he resisted--cooperating with Democrats to encourage Southern resistance, promoting a political reaction in the North, and hindering the Army's enforcement of the laws in the South through his power as commander in chief. When Johnson tried to gain control of the Army in February 1868, removing the secretary of war in apparent violation of law, he was Impeached by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate. The excellence of Johnson's lawyers, the ambiguity of the law, the cessation of his interference in the South, the establishment of new governments there and the admission of their representatives to Congress, and divisions among Republicans all led to a verdict of "not guilty" by one vote. Johnson served out theremainder of his term quietly.
Johnson's administration was ably served by its secretary of state, William Henry Seward, who was instrumental in the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Seward was also vigorous, during the Civil War period under Lincoln and later under Johnson, in protesting the French military intervention in Mexico as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. American diplomatic pressure increased, and the French withdrew in 1866.
Returning to Tennessee, Johnson began rebuilding his eastern Tennessee political base, seeking various Democratic nominations from 1869 to 1872. His old enemies in the Tennessee Democratic party, however, frustrated his ambitions. In 1874 he finally achieved the vindication he wanted so desperately, winning election to the U.S. Senate by a coalition of Republicans and dissident Democrats. On March 5, 1875, he once again took his seat in the Senate. He died a few months later, on July 31.Return to Last Page

Warren Harding was born in Corsica, Ohio, on November 2, 1865, He attended Ohio Central College, studied law, and became editor and publisher of the Marion Star, a country newspaper in Marion, Ohio. He married Florence Kling DeWolfe in 1891, who was considered a major force in his rise to national prominence. Harding entered politics as a dependent of Republican Senator Joseph Foraker and served in the Ohio Senate and as lieutenant governor of the state. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914 but resigned from it in 1920 after winning a landslide election over Woodrow Wilson as the Republican candidate for president. At the time of his nomination, and for years afterward, he was widely regarded as having been the choice of the party machine bosses, but a more recent study has shown that Harding simply was the party's most logical and available nominee.
Harding turned away from the powerful executive leadership styles of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. As president, he delegated much authority to his cabinet chiefs, whom he chose for their national or regional constituencies or their weight in party councils. Among the outstanding members of his cabinet were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace.
Harding's first task as president was to move the government away from wartime emergency conditions, and in this his administration was successful. In certain areas it was innovative, stepping up federal hiring during an employment slump, proposing agricultural legislation, and creating a Bureau of the Budget. In 1922 Secretary of State Hughes, with Harding's active support, scored a diplomatic triumph at the Washington Conference on naval disarmament, when the great international powers had agreed to limit their capital ship tonnage in fixed ratios. Harding also acted forcefully in the movement to limit the long hours of labour that were existent in the American steel industry.
On August 2, 1923, as rumors began to circulate about corruption in his administration, Harding died in San Francisco. He was succeeded by vice president Calvin Coolidge. Charges of misconduct in the Interior and Navy departments, the Veterans' Bureau, the Justice Department, and the Office of the Alien Property Custodian were disclosed in a series of investigations and trials. The scandals implicated both high officials and personal friends of Harding. Discovery of bribery, influence peddling, and outright theft overshadowed the positive achievements of the Harding administration. The president had spoken all too truly when he remarked that he could take care of his enemies but that he did not know how to cope with his friends.Return to Last Page

James Buchanan, the 15th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (1857-1861), served during the beginning of the secession crisis that led to the Civil War. Of Scottish-Irish descent, he was born on Apr. 23, 1791, in Cove Gap, near Mercersburg, Pa., the son of James Buchanan, a prosperous storekeeper, and his wife, Elizabeth Speer.
Young James received an academy education and attended Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., graduating in 1809. He then studied law in Lancaster, where he began practice in 1813. Although a FEDERALIST in political sympathies, he supported the prosecution of the War of 1812 and participated as a volunteer in the defense of Baltimore.
After serving in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (1814-16), Buchanan devoted attention to his law practice, which soon prospered. In 1819 he became engaged to Ann Coleman, daughter of a wealthy Lancaster iron manufacturer, but as a result of a misunderstanding the engagement was ended. Her sudden death shortly thereafter left Buchanan desolate. He never married.
In 1820, Buchanan was elected to the U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. With the collapse of the Federalist party, he supported Andrew JACKSON for the presidency. In the late 1820s he emerged as the leader of the Amalgamation party, the dominant faction of Pennsylvania Jacksonians.
Buchanan retired from CONGRESS in 1831 but later that year accepted Jackson's offer of the ministry to Russia. He remained at St. Petersburg from 1832 to 1834, where he concluded a commercial treaty. Shortly after his return he was elected to the U.S. SENATE, where he served from 1834 to 1845.
Mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 1844, Buchanan became (1845) secretary of state in the cabinet of President James K. POLK. Although Polk personally directed the formulation of foreign policy, Buchanan worked diligently in matters relating to the consummation of the annexation (1845) of Texas, the settlement of theOregon Question, and the Mexican War. He retired from office at the end of the Polk administration in 1849. Buchanan was a serious contender for the DEMOCRATIC nomination in 1852 but lost to Franklin PIERCE, who named him minister to Great Britain. His mission in London (1853-56) accomplished little but benefited him politically, for he remained aloof from the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854).
At the Democratic convention in 1856, Buchanan won the presidential nomination on the 17th ballot. In the fall he won an ELECTORAL victory, although he failed to get a popular majority over John C.Fremont, the Republican, and Millard FILLMORE, the KNOW-NOTHING candidate.
Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court declared in the Dred Scott case that Congress had no power over slavery in the territories. He welcomed this ruling as the final word on that issue, but the REPUBLICANS and many Northern Democrats refused to accept the Court's opinion. Like Pierce, Buchanan met difficulties in organizing Kansas Territory. He urged Congress to accept the territory's proslavery LeCompton Constitution, even though it had been drawn up by an unrepresentative convention that had refused to submit it to the people. Stephen A. Douglas, Democratic senator of Illinois, broke with Buchanan, arguing that the president's stand made a mockery of the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. Ultimately the constitution was referred to the Kansas electorate, which overwhelmingly rejected it.
With his long experience in diplomacy, Buchanan expected his administration to conduct a vigorous foreign policy. He sought to extend American influence in the Caribbean, but congressional opposition forced him to give up efforts to purchase Cuba from Spain. Inevitably, domestic matters intruded upon his attention. The panic of 1857 added to the unpopularity of his administration and contributed to heavy Democratic losses in the congressional elections of 1858.
The sectional controversy grew steadily more serious during the last two years of Buchanan's presidency. The raid by John Brown at Harpers Ferry and Brown's execution by Virginia authorities in 1859 intensified public feeling in both the South and the North. In the presidential campaign of 1860 the Democratic party split, and Buchanan endorsed Vice-President John C. BRECKINRIDGE of Kentucky, whom he considered the regular nominee, instead of Douglas, the candidate of the Northern Democrats.
The election of Abraham LINCOLN, the Republican candidate, prompted the secession of seven Southern states and the creation of the Confederate States of America during Buchanan's last months in office. The president was criticized by secessionists because he denied the legality of their action and by Northern advocates of a more vigorous policy because he believed that the executive lacked the power to coerce a state. He based his hopes for the survival of the Union on last-minute compromise efforts, which failed. As the more pro-Southern cabinet members resigned during the crisis, he took a stronger pro-Union stand, refusing to turn over Fort Pickens in Florida and Fort Summer in South Carolina to the authorities in those secessionist states.
During the Civil War Buchanan generally supported Lincoln's war policies while preparing a defense of his own administration, which he published in 1866. He died at his estate, Wheatland, near Lancaster, on June 1, 1868.
Buchanan's reputation is judged mainly by his conduct during the last months of his presidency, and he is therefore generally regarded as an ineffective executive. In his defense it can be said that he was a lame-duck president caught in a vicious crossfire between secessionists and Republicans. But at the same time his adherence to a conservative legalism led him to interpret narrowly his powers to deal with an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Return to Last Page

Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.
Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he was graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."
But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.
His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.
President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.
Taft disliked the campaign--"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.
Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt--the "mad messiah."
Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his prede
cessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends." Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.
In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.
In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."  Return to Last Page