Tag Archives: book review

Ready Teddy

Even before he became our nation’s 26th President in September 1901 at the young age of 42, Theodore Roosevelt had accomplished more than most people could in multiple lifetimes. He was a self-taught natural historian, a respected expert on naval warfare, a reform-minded civil servant, a police commissioner, an author, a rancher, a politician and a military hero. Historian Edmund Morris describes all this and more in the first volume of a three-volume biography. After a short prologue, this first book in the set — called “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” — covers Theodore Roosevelt’s jam-packed life before he became president. It’s an informative, entertaining and gripping narrative, and I found it an absolute pleasure to read.

book review by Fred Michmershuizen

 

A physician told Theodore Roosevelt early in his life that he had a weak heart. The doctor recommended the cocky young man take a sedentary desk job. It was advice that Theodore Roosevelt ignored. He had been a sickly child who suffered from asthma, but that did not stop him. He exercised his body and even learned how to box. As a curious boy, little “Teedie” studied insects, birds and small animals. He taught himself how to perform taxidermy, and he started preserving specimens of animals he caught or killed. He called his collection the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.

The Roosevelt family was large and wealthy. Theodore Roosevelt’s father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., was a merchant. The senior Roosevelt was nominated by President Hayes to replace Chester A. Arthur as head of the New York Customs House, in Hayes’ dispute with Senator Roscoe Conkling over civil service reform. The elder Roosevelt’s nomination was then rejected by the U.S. Senate, leaving a bad taste in the Roosevelt family’s mouth over politics.

Theodore Roosevelt Sr. took his whole family overseas twice when “Teedie” was young. They traveled all over Europe and Egypt. One of the overseas trips lasted more than a year. Along the way Roosevelt learned French and German. Back home, Roosevelt went to Harvard and then later went to law school. But he did not like law school and instead decided, against the wishes of his relatives, to try his hand at politics. In this era, it was not common for someone of Roosevelt’s social standing to enter politics.

He served three terms in the New York State Assembly in Albany. At this time, future U.S. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was governor. In the Assembly Roosevelt developed a reputation as a reformer bent on rooting out corruption. In 1886 Roosevelt ran for Mayor of New York City but lost. He then went on to serve in the federal government in Washington, D.C., on the Civil Service Commission, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison. Again in this role he waged battles against corrupt and incompetent jobholders and officeholders. When Grover Cleveland became president for the second time, Roosevelt stayed on for a time in the same job. Later he became Police Commissioner in New York City, serving on a four-man panel for two tumultuous years. In this role, he further cemented his reputation as a reformer, someone who was not afraid to buck the system. To everyone’s shock and horror, he enforced the city’s no-booze-on-Sundays law. He also would sneak out late at night and pounce on cops who were sleeping on the job, scaring and embarrassing them to get back to work.

When Theodore Roosevelt was still in college, his father died, leaving him an inheritance that would have allowed him to live modestly for the rest of his life as an academic or author. He had a childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow, but he spurned her and instead married a socialite, Alice Hathaway Lee, with whom he had a daughter, Alice. But his first wife died, tragically on the very same day as Roosevelt’s mother, in the same house. Roosevelt later married a second time, this time to Edith, and they had several more children. Their wedding took place in London.

Theodore was close to a sister, Anna, aka “Bamie,” who raised the younger Alice after her mother died. His older brother, Elliott, was troubled and eventually died of alcoholism. According to the book, Elliott fathered an illegitimate child with a woman who was not his wife and the family likely made hush money payments to keep the story out of the press.

After his first wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt spent much time in the Badlands of the Dakotas, where he went on many hunting trips and became a rancher. He invested a large portion of his inheritance on cattle, hiring others to run things, but unfortunately this venture was ultimately unsuccessful. During one particularly harsh winter, most of his herd died. During one especially memorable incident out west, he caught three men who had stolen a boat, an adventure that took him hundreds of miles and lasted several weeks.

As if this all weren’t enough, Roosevelt also wrote many books. Among the titles he published before he became president were “The Natural History of Insects,” “History of New York City,” “The Winning of the West” and “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.” His book on warships, “The Naval War of 1812,” was considered authoritative. He also wrote multiple books about birds, plus three biographies — of Gouverneur Morris, one of America’s founding fathers, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, proponent of “Manifest Destiny,” and Oliver Cromwell, the English historical figure.

Oh, and he also climbed the Matterhorn!

Here are a few more facts about Theodore Roosevelt:

  • Born in a New York City townhouse! It’s located at 28 E. 20th Street — just blocks from where I live!
  • When he was a boy, he watched from a window as the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln passed through the streets of New York City.
  • He wore spectacles and had big, flashy teeth.
  • He liked to fight.
  • When he got to work each morning, whether at the state capitol in Albany or the civil service department in Washington or police headquarters in Manhattan, he often ran up the steps. He was that energetic.
  • He was the youngest to ever become president, when he was 42. (JFK was the second youngest to become president as a 43-year-old.)
  • Theodore Roosevelt was related to both Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Eleanor was his niece (daughter of his older brother Elliott), and Franklin was a distant cousin.

During President William McKinley’s first term, Theodore Roosevelt became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. But the secretary he served under was old and lazy and went on long vacations, leaving Theodore Roosevelt to run amok. He drafted war plans, agitated for war with Spain — and got George Dewey sent to command the U.S. fleet in Asia, a move that would later have immense consequences on world events. When war was declared with Spain over its occupation of Cuba, Dewey attacked the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, sinking it, which caused the United States to take over the Philippines as a protectorate. This went just as Theodore Roosevelt had planned!

The minute war was declared with Spain, Theodore Roosevelt resigned his post in the Naval Department and joined the U.S. Army. He helped found the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, nicknamed the Rough Riders, to fight in Cuba, in what would become known as the Spanish American War. The Rough Riders was a mounted regiment that included a ragtag band of outdoorsmen, cowboys and ranchers, plus a bunch of Roosevelt’s friends from college. Roosevelt was second in command, as lieutenant colonel, but later he was promoted to colonel. While in Cuba, Roosevelt was involved in two key battles — Las Guasimas and San Juan Hill — in which he led troops under enemy fire. Roosevelt fought bravely, if recklessly, leading a charge up Kettle Hill. Many around him were killed or maimed. He would for the rest of his life be called Colonel Roosevelt.

Returning to New York a genuine war hero, Roosevelt ran for Governor of New York State and won, again with the idea of instituting reforms to root out corruption. He instantly began clashing with the powerful Senator from New York, Thomas C. Platt, who was a Republican Party heavyweight at the time.

Meanwhile McKinley’s vice president, Garrett Hobart, had died, leaving an opening on the Republican ticket for the election of 1900. According to the book, Platt arranged to have Roosevelt nominated as the vice presidential candidate for what would have been McKinley’s second term, largely to get Roosevelt out of his way. With the economy booming and war with Spain won, the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket sailed to victory that November. Less than a year later, in September 1901, when McKinley was shot in Buffalo, Roosevelt rushed to his bedside. But it soon looked like McKinley was going to recover, so Roosevelt took his family on vacation. The thinking was that by doing so, he would reassure the American people that their president was going to recover and that everything would be OK. But it did not turn out that way. Roosevelt was climbing Mount Marcy, in a remote location in the Adirondacks, when a messenger arrived with a telegram that McKinley was near death.

And that’s where this book leaves off.

It was a dramatic ending. In reading this book, I learned so much and developed a number of key insights about Theodore Roosevelt, the man.

First, I was struck by his tremendous energy and vigor. He could run circles around just about anyone, both physically and intellectually. He seemed immune to discomforts such as cold weather, rain or snow, hunger or fatigue. The author does not mention this, but reading between the lines it almost seems that Roosevelt might possibly have been bi-polar. He also had immense political skills and a flair for the dramatic. He was able to communicate with people from all walks of life, from rich aristocrats to ranchers out west.

Then of course is Roosevelt’s desire for reform. In all of his public service jobs, he became known as someone who was going to turn over rocks, to ask hard questions, to enforce the law. As an assemblyman, as a civil service commissioner and as a police commissioner, he went after corruption and bucked the system. He did not care if he was caricatured in the press or if power brokers mocked him. Sometimes his efforts at reform were successful, other times not.

Finally and most importantly is Roosevelt’s view of the United States and its role in the world. If you think of the word “jingoism,” think of Theodore Roosevelt. For better or worse, Roosevelt envisioned nothing but greatness for our country, and having a strong navy, and control of the seas, was key to building a world empire as he envisioned it. He wanted our nation to exert power on the world stage, starting with driving the last of the European colonizers out of the Western Hemisphere once and for all. He wanted the United States to finally build a canal, long envisioned, through the Central American isthmus. And he wanted Americans to continue to settle the great American West.

As Morris writes, when Roosevelt became president at the dawn of a new century the United States was poised to become a superpower. It already had enormous economic strength and had the potential for great military might. What will Theodore Roosevelt do as president? I’ve already started into “Theodore Rex,” the second book in this series by the same author, which covers TR’s White House years. There’s so much more to learn about this colossus of a man.

Sarah Vowell’s ‘Assassination Vacation’

review of Sarah Vowell’s ‘Assassination Vacation’In “Assassination Vacation,” Sarah Vowell writes in the first person about visiting various historical sites relating to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. She travels extensively, as far away as the Dry Tortugas, where Dr. Mudd was imprisoned in the 1860s. She stops by to examine plaques in locations at which incidents of historical significance took place, she goes on guided tours, she visits museums and universities, and she offers many clever insights. It’s an entertaining book to read. It was published in 2005, which is before smart phones and GPS technology. It’s also during the height of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, and the author sprinkles in plenty of criticism of the then current president into her narrative.

For me, “Assassination Vacation” was even more interesting for two reasons. First, I recently finished reading biographies of our nation’s first 25 presidents, three of whom were assassinated. So I was familiar with many of the names and events described. And second, I happen to live near Gramercy, Madison Square and Union Square parks, which are among the locations mentioned often in the book.

The author offers a number of keen observations. One of them is that Robert Todd Lincoln, President Lincoln’s oldest son, was present at the assassinations of not only his father but also of those of Garfield and McKinley. (She jokingly refers to him as “Jinxy McDeath.”) Another is that Lincoln’s last conscious moment was likely one of laughter. That’s because John Wilkes Booth, an actor who knew the play “Our American Cousin” by heart, waited for the exact moment at which a line that would have elicited audience laughter to fire his gun. She surmises that Lincoln himself therefore would have been laughing when he was shot. Another fun notation she makes is that the powerful Senator from New York, Roscoe Conkling, was arguably more famous than President Chester A. Arthur, as evidenced by the inscriptions at the bases of their respective statues in Madison Square Park. Conkling’s, she points out, just gives his name while Arthur’s states that he was 21st President. I’ve walked by these statues hundreds of times and never considered this juxtaposition.

She devotes one chapter each to Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, then she concludes with a chapter on the architectural design of the Lincoln Memorial. She also ties in Kennedy’s assassination and the famous Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences. It’s this last chapter, which concludes with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, taking place in 1922, that is the most poignant. Robert Todd, who by that time was an old man, was present for that as well. It brought a tear to my eye.

If I ever write a book myself about the presidents and someday I just might, I hope that it would be as fun, informative and heart-warming as “Assassination Vacation.”

William McKinley: 25th President

review of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry It was under the calm, steady leadership of William McKinley that the United States first became a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. That’s according to the biography “President McKinley: Architect of the American Century,” by Robert W. Merry. Clocking in at just under 500 pages, the book describes how McKinley took us to war against Spain to liberate Cuba. Along the way we sunk the Spanish fleet in the Philippines and turned that into a U.S. protectorate. But that turned bloody when native militants fought for their own independence and we wouldn’t grant it. We sent troops to put down the insurgency and to help the Filipinos establish their own U.S.-approved self-government. (What could possibly go wrong?) We also seized Guam and made Puerto Rico a territory.

In addition to the Spanish-American War and its aftermath, McKinley formulated an “open door policy” toward China, which called for equal trade with China among all countries. He also wanted to prevent other countries from carving up China. All this got very messy during what became known as the Boxer Rebellion, in which anti-colonial nationalists attacked Christians and foreign diplomats, including Americans. The United States joined in an eight-nation alliance to quell the rebellion, but as a result the ruling Qing Dynasty later collapsed. Oops.

McKinley also helped lay the groundwork for the construction of a shipping canal through Central America, by re-negotiating treaties with Great Britain and by setting up commissions to study the project. The canal was originally intended to go through Nicaragua, but McKinley also wanted a site in what became Panama to be considered.

Oh, and it was under McKinley that the United States annexed Hawaii. All this happened in McKinley’s first term.

Just like Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield, two of his recent predecessors, McKinley was a Republican from Ohio who had served in the Civil War. McKinley entered the war as an enlisted soldier and later became an officer, achieving the rank of Major. He fought in numerous engagements, including the Battle of Antietam. After the war McKinley was elected to Congress and focused on the issue of protective tariffs. After being gerrymandered out of office, he was elected governor of Ohio.

White House portrait of William McKinley by Harriet Anderson Stubbs Murphy (Public domain)

When he ran successfully for president in 1896 against Democrat William Jennings Bryan, McKinley did not travel the country to deliver speeches but rather conducted a “front porch campaign” in which various constituencies came to Ohio to visit him. It was a method of campaigning that had been previously employed by Indiana’s Benjamin Harrison, but McKinley was better at it, staging each front porch visit for maximum effect. The architect of his campaign, political ally Mark Hanna, distributed large volumes of campaign literature.

At the time the two biggest domestic issues were protective tariffs, and what to do about silver vs. gold as it related to the nation’s money supply. On the tariff issue, McKinley wanted to maintain protective rates but wanted the flexibility to negotiate reciprocity agreements with individual nations. On the metals issue, McKinley wanted gold but at the same time did not want to to shut out the silver advocates, who represented powerful constituencies. As his term in office went on and the nation’s economy improved, McKinley was able to soften his stance on tariffs and eventually sign legislation establishing a gold standard for the nation’s money supply once and for all.

Another domestic issue at the time was the problem of corporate monopolies, or trusts. A recent Supreme Court decision had struck down a law, and McKinley subsequently did very little to rein in trusts, saying federal legislation would likely be unconstitutional. It also appears that McKinley did very little if anything about civil rights, certainly nothing that was documented in any detail in the book.

Two future presidents played prominent roles during McKinley’s presidency. Theodore Roosevelt was McKinley’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but he resigned that post when the Spanish-American War broke out. Roosevelt founded the Rough Riders and fought in Cuba, then ran for governor of New York and won, before getting himself on the ticket in 1900 as the Republican vice presidential nominee. According to the book, McKinley did not want Roosevelt on the ticket but felt there was nothing he could do to stop him. McKinley also appointed William Howard Taft, who had been a circuit court judge, to be the civilian governor of the Philippines. In addition, future president Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer deployed to China.

Sadly, President McKinley was the victim of gun violence. He was shot twice at close range while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in September 1901, and he died a week later. The assassin was Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.

An artist’s drawing depicting the assassination in 1901 of President William McKinley in Buffalo. (Public domain)

Here are some additional facts about our nation’s 25th President:

  • McKinley was the fifth president to die in office and the third to be assassinated.
  • His wife, Ida, had a number of chronic illnesses, both physical and psychological, that plagued her incessantly. At times her antics bordered on insanity, yet McKinley was devoted to her and constantly catered to her every demand.
  • The McKinleys had two children, both daughters, who both died in childhood.
  • After the election of 1896, Mark Hanna persuaded McKinley to name sitting U.S. Senator John Sherman of Ohio to the Secretary of State post, so that he could run for Sherman’s open Senate seat. It was a crazy plan, but it worked. Hanna became a Senator and subsequently ran McKinley’s successful re-election campaign in 1900.
  • Garret A. Hobart of New Jersey was McKinley’s first Vice President. But Hobart died in office, clearing the way for Theodore Roosevelt to run on the ticket in the election of 1900.
  • The election of 1900 was a rematch between McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. When McKinley won decisively, he considered that a confirmation from the American people that he was doing everything right.
  • Unlike his immediate predecessor, Grover Cleveland, who largely ignored the press, McKinley was open with the press. In the papers he received plenty of praise, and lots and lots of condemnation over his “imperialist” policies.
  • Oh, and one extra special fun fact: The wonderfully talented actor Michael Urie — who is currently appearing on Broadway in the lead role in Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song” — has a dog named President McKinley! It’s a Boston Terrier-Chihuahua mix, and, according to the New York Post, he puts “Kinley” in a backpack and they ride around town together on a bike!

As presidential biographies go, I found Robert W. Merry’s “President McKinley” to be insightful, with some very good analysis. As Merry freely admits, McKinley lacked creative thinking and was not the most charismatic of presidents. He did not have the force of personality of his immediate successor, Theodore Roosevelt. At the same time, to his credit, he did not make rash policy decisions or offer any bold pronouncements. (In other words, he did not tweet!) Yet Merry points out that despite McKinley’s lack of charisma, he usually achieved his goals in his own way, by listening respectfully to others, considering all sides of an issue before making a decision, and then using “incrementalism” to get what he wanted. But when it came to an aggressive foreign policy, were McKinley’s decisions good or bad? George Washington had famously warned our nation to avoid foreign entanglements, a policy that stood fast for the better part of a century. It’s therefore a bit shocking, in a way, to read how McKinley would point the United States on a much different path. He set the stage for the United States to take a leadership role in the enormous conflicts that would soon envelop the globe in two world wars. It’s what would later become, in what Merry calls in the subtitle to his book, “The American Century.”

Benjamin Harrison

“I want it understood that I am the grandson of nobody. I believe every man should stand on his own merits,” said Benjamin Harrison when he was just 22 years old and about to embark upon a public life. And what a life it turned out to be. As the 23rd President of the United States — he served a single term between Grover Cleveland’s two nonconsecutive terms — Benjamin Harrison was tremendously productive, working closely with Congress to shepherd an immense amount of legislation, including the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the McKinley Tariff Act, legislation that established federal protection for forests, and much more. He strengthened the U.S. Navy and improved shipping for the trans-Atlantic passage of mail. Benjamin Harrison also skillfully faced a number of foreign policy crises, including disputes with Italy, Chile and Great Britain, all of which required wisdom, tact and steady resolve.

biography of Benjamin Harrison

 

When Benjamin Harrison came into office there was a federal budget surplus, which was considered a big problem. At that time there was still no federal income tax. Instead the government raised revenue mostly through tariffs. Many Democrats wanted the tariffs reduced or eliminated altogether, but Harrison wanted them kept in place to protect American industry. He wanted the protective tariffs coupled with reciprocal trade agreements. He believed the federal government should spend money on veterans benefits, infrastructure and education, particularly schooling for blacks in the South. He was open to debate on currency but vigorously opposed the unlimited coinage of silver money, which would later cost him votes, especially in the West.

Benjamin Harrison also faced setbacks while in office. He failed to get voting rights legislation through Congress, though he did try. The tariff protections were intended to benefit workers, but instead industry leaders cut wages, leading to labor unrest and even violence. Like so many other presidents, Benjamin Harrison faced difficult problems dealing with Indian affairs. The battle of Wounded Knee, in which hundreds of Lakota Sioux were massacred by U.S. troops in North Dakota, happened under his watch. He also signed anti-Chinese immigration legislation.

Many of the bills Harrison got passed were on strict party-line votes, and the Republicans suffered huge losses in the midterm elections in 1890. In Harrison’s failed re-election bid in the presidential election of 1892, it was a rematch with Cleveland. Just two weeks before Election Day, in October of that year, his wife, Caroline, died. After leaving office Benjamin Harrison returned to Indianapolis and resumed his law practice, earning large fees. He represented Venezuela in a lengthy and arduous boundary dispute with Great Britain. He continued to follow politics but declined to seek office again or to campaign much for fellow Republicans. He was not a huge fan of Cleveland or of his successor, William McKinley. Benjamin Harrison died in 1901 at age 67.

Here are some additional facts about Benjamin Harrison, our nation’s 23rd President:

  • He served as an officer in the Civil War and was considered a war hero. He led troops in several battles.
  • He was from Indianapolis, though he had been born in Ohio.
  • Physically, he was small.
  • In his personal life he was deeply religious.
  • Many of his writings were published as a book, called This Country of Ours.
  • His grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was elected President when Benjamin was still a boy. The elder Harrison had been a Whig, but Benjamin Harrison was a Republican. President William Henry Harrison, who had also been a military hero, died after about a month in office. The Harrison family went all the way back to the founding of our country. His great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
  • Before Benjamin Harrison became President he served one term in the U.S. Senate, but he was defeated for re-election after the districts in Indiana were gerrymandered. He had also run for governor of Indiana but lost.
  • Leading up to the 1888 presidential election, Harrison did not travel but rather conducted a “front porch” campaign, in which various groups came to Indianapolis to hear him speak.
  • He selected a political rival, James G. Blaine, as Secretary of State, who turned into a huge pain in the ass. Blaine was frequently absent for long stretches due to his health, and Harrison did much of the State Department’s diplomatic work himself.
  • Under Benjamin Harrison, federal spending topped $1 billion for the first time.
  • He traveled extensively as president.
  • Benjamin Harrison maintained a lifelong friendship with Mary “Mame” Dimmick, a niece of his wife. After his wife died and Harrison had left the presidency, he married this younger woman and they had a child together. His children with his first wife and their spouses loathed Mame.

To learn about the 23rd President, I read “Benjamin Harrison” by Charles W. Calhoun. This is another in the American Presidents series, and like all books in this series it was short, concise and informative. The meatiest and most detailed chapters of the book covered Benjamin Harrison’s presidency. I got confused by all the controversy over silver. And I would have liked to learn just a bit more about his service in the Civil War.

The 22nd and 24th President of the United States

Grover Cleveland — the 22nd and 24th President of the United States — had a meteoric rise. He was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and one year later he was elected Governor of New York. Just two years after that, in 1884, he was elected president, defeating the Republican James G. Blaine. Four years later, in 1888, Cleveland lost his re-election bid to Benjamin Harrison despite having won the popular vote. Four years after that, in 1892, he defeated Harrison and returned to power. Four years later, in 1896, he failed to receive the nomination of his party, and he retired from public office.

“Grover Cleveland” by Henry F. Graff

 

Cleveland was the fourth president to come from New York State and the second from Buffalo. He is one of only two Democrats, along with Woodrow Wilson, to serve as President in the post-Civil War era. He was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Cleveland was known for his honest integrity while in office. He was a hard worker and did a lot of paperwork. Politically, he believed in small government and was opposed to imperialist expansionism. He was opposed to tariffs and favored the gold standard over silver. He is sometimes referred to as a “Bourbon Democrat.”

He was a bachelor when he was first elected President, and during his first term he married a much younger woman, whose first name was Frank, who went by Frances. She was the daughter of a deceased friend. They were married in the White House and they went on to have a batch of children. One of them, a daughter, Ruth, died, and many years later the candy bar Baby Ruth was named after her!

Fred Michmershuizen
Grover Cleveland in 1903, at age 66. (Photograph by Frederick Gutekunst, Public Domain)

Physically, Cleveland was tall and heavy. He got even heavier after he became president. He had a moustache but no beard. Later in life he suffered health problems, including gout. While he was president he developed oral cancer, and he was operated on in secret aboard a ship.

During his second term the economy crashed, and he lost popularity. After he left office, his reputation rebounded. After his presidency, Cleveland and his family moved to New Jersey, and he became a trustee at Princeton University. He also did work for the insurance industry. He died of a heart attack in 1908 at age 71.

Here are some additional facts about Grover Cleveland:

  • Grover Cleveland was not from Cleveland, Ohio, but the city had been named for one of the president’s relatives! Both the family and the city originally spelled the name Cleaveland!
  • He was born Stephen Grover Cleveland in Caldwell, N.J. His father was a minister. The name Grover came from one of his father’s friends, also a minister.
  • While in Buffalo, Cleveland worked at the same law firm that Millard Fillmore had belonged to.
  • Cleveland did not serve during the Civil War. When a draft was enacted, he paid a Polish immigrant $150 to take his place. This was legal and a common practice. At the time, he was supporting his family financially.
  • During the 1884 Presidential election, Cleveland was accused of having fathered an illegitimate child with a woman of low character.
  • He won the popular vote for president in three consecutive elections.
  • He never served in a legislature.
  • He used the Resolute Desk, which was a gift from Queen Victoria, first presented to President Hayes, which was made from timbers from the HMS Resolute, a famous British ship that had been decommissioned.
  • He was President for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886.
  • It was said that just before the Clevelands left the White House on Benjamin Harrison’s inauguration day, Frances told a worker to take good care of the furniture because they would be back. And they did come back just four years later.

As presidential biographies go, I found “Grover Cleveland” by Henry F. Graff, part of the American Presidents Series, to be a little on the skimpy side. The book covered all the basics, but not much more. There was almost nothing about his family life, or his children. This was not my first choice for a presidential biography of Cleveland. I wanted to get “Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character” by Alyn Brodsky, but sadly I could not find an affordable new copy online, and the title was not available at Barnes and Noble nor at The Strand. So I went with this American Presidents Series book, which was quick and easy. What I liked best about Graff’s book was its excellent descriptions of the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions of 1884, 1888 and 1892.

Chester A. Arthur: 21st President of the United States

It’s not possible to tell the story of how Chester A. Arthur came to be our nation’s 21st President without talking about Roscoe Conkling, a powerful Republican Senator from New York. These were the days of “machine politics,” and nobody played the game better than Conkling. The way it worked was that a politician such as Conkling could dispense patronage appointments to friends and political allies, and in return these job-holders paid a portion of their salaries back to the coffers of those who had gotten them their positions. If one were running for office, he or his allies could promise future jobs in return for their support. The biggest job of them all — the plummiest of plum positions — was Collector of New York Customs, and during the Grant administration Conkling got Arthur appointed to that post. Arthur thrived, becoming a fat cat (he got literally fat) and getting very rich. He wore the finest clothes and lived in a fancy house at 123 Lexington Avenue (and on a personal note, that house is just three blocks away from where I live!).

Chester A. Arthur book review by Fred Michmershuizen
‘The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur’ by Scott. S. Greenberger

Then along came President Rutherford B. Hayes, who got elected in 1876 after promising to break up this system. Hayes got into a huge fight with Conkling over how the New York Custom House was being managed, and Hayes eventually fired Arthur. By the time the Republican National Convention got underway in 1880, Conkling was seething mad and tried but failed to get Grant — a fellow “Stalwart” — nominated for what would have been an unprecedented third term. (Hayes had pledged not to seek re-election.) Another wing of the party wanted Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, but when neither Grant nor Blaine had the votes, they went with a completely different candidate, James Garfield! To placate the Stalwarts and in an attempt to balance the ticket ideologically, the delegates gave the Vice Presidential nomination to none other than Chester A. Arthur. Having never served in elected office before, Arthur was completely unqualified and everyone knew it.

Upon taking office Garfield picked a huge fight with Conkling over — you guessed it — the Collector job at New York Customs. In what would become an ill-fated move, Conkling resigned in protest and went to Albany, hoping to get immediately re-elected, and Vice President Arthur, who was seen as disloyal to Garfield and nothing more than Conkling’s lackey, followed him.

123 Lexington Avenue home of Chester A Arthur
123 Lexington Ave., New York City

It was about this time that Garfield got shot, and, get this: The gunman turned out to be crazy office seeker who had been spurned for a job he thought he deserved! Not only that, but when they were taking him away to jail, he yelled out to everyone that he was doing this for the Stalwarts and not to worry, Chester Arthur would fix everything! It was the worst possible scenario for Arthur, who spent much of the subsequent weeks crying and fretting.

Garfield lived another two months, but Arthur stayed away from Washington because he did not want to be seen as too overly eager to seize power. Instead he stayed mostly in New York City and met frequently with Conkling. Everyone still saw Arthur as Conkling’s man, which is why it must have been very surprising to all, especially Conkling himself, when Arthur defied his onetime benefactor by not appointing Conkling’s choice to the Collector post. Later in his presidency, in a move that surprised everyone even more, Arthur would go on to sign a civil service reform bill into law. Not only that, but he enforced it with deputies who took the new law seriously.

These are some of the events described in “The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur” by Scott. S. Greenberger. This turned out to be an excellent sequel to the Garfield book “Destiny of the Republic” by Candice Millard.

When he became president, Arthur comported himself well and struck the right tone, pledging to carry on in a manner that would be respectful to his murdered predecessor. During his presidency, Arthur strengthened the U.S. Navy. He vetoed a “rivers and harbors” bill that had been inflated with pork projects from legislators. Congress later passed the bill over his veto.

statue of Chester A Arthur in Madison Square Park
Statue of Chester A. Arthur in Madison Square Park, New York City

His record on human rights is mixed. When Congress passed an anti-Chinese immigration bill, Arthur vetoed it. Then when Congress passed a slightly milder yet still egregious bill, he signed it. When the Supreme Court stuck down a civil rights law during his presidency, Arthur called for new legislation in his annual message to Congress but did nothing more. Early in his career as a lawyer in New York City, Arthur represented a black woman who had been denied a seat on a streetcar and won her case, thereby helping desegregate public transportation in New York City. Everywhere he traveled, African Americans seemed to love him and many gave him handmade gifts.

When he was in office, Arthur received long letters from a young woman, Julia Sand, who had health problems and was living with her family in New York City. She offered Arthur plenty of advice on how he should behave, both politically and morally, and this advice must have had a profound effect on Arthur because he eventually paid her a personal visit. Before he died Arthur burned his papers, but many decades later his surviving relatives discovered 23 of Sand’s letters that Arthur had saved.

Here are some additional facts about Chester Alan Arthur:

  • He was born in Vermont. He had many siblings. His father was a preacher and the family moved frequently, eventually migrating to upstate New York.
  • During the first half of the Civil War, Arthur served in the military as a quartermaster.
  • His wife, Nell, died before he became president. There were three children in all. A son died in early childhood, and a second son and daughter lived to adulthood.
  • Nell was from Virginia, and before and during the war there were family struggles because she was from the South. Her father, Herndon, was a ship captain who died in a horrific shipwreck but was hailed as a hero.
  • Like Presidents Jefferson, Jackson and Van Buren before him, Arthur came into office a widower. He asked his youngest sister to be “mistress of the White House” in place of a First Lady.
  • Arthur had the White House refurbished before he moved in. He lived with a senator during the renovations.
  • Arthur enjoyed fine food and drink, and he smoked the best cigars. He was always well dressed. He was polite to all.
  • He traveled frequently to New York City, especially early in his presidency. Later he visited Florida and Yellowstone National Park.
  • Arthur appointed Conkling to the Supreme Court and the Senate confirmed him, but Conkling declined.
  • Arthur was president during the dedication of the Washington Monument and offered a proclamation at a ceremony on Feb. 21, 1885.
  • Shortly after Arthur left office in 1885, former President Grant died and received an elaborate funeral in New York City. Arthur helped raise funds for what would become Grant’s Tomb.
  • Arthur also helped raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
  • Arthur’s own funeral in Manhattan was modest compared to Grant’s and was attended by President Cleveland and former President Hayes.

In 1884 Arthur lost the nomination of the Republican Party to Blaine, who would go on to lose in the fall to Democrat Grover Cleveland. According to Greenberger, Arthur put up only a token fight for the nomination because he knew he was terminally ill with Bright’s disease and had known for some time, but he did not want this information to become public. After leaving office he returned to his home in New York City and died a year later, in 1886, of a stroke. He was 57. He was buried outside Albany.

statue of Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park
Statue of Roscoe Conkling, who was a powerful Republican Senator from New York, in Madison Square Park

It was striking that Arthur, a man who had been so closely associated with Conkling and the corrupt “machine politics” of New York, someone who was the unlikeliest of presidents, would be the one to initiate civil service reform. Today Arthur’s house at 123 Lexington is Kalustyan’s, a shop selling Middle Eastern foods, but just inside and behind glass, visible to passers-by, is a plaque commemorating the building’s place in American history. The plaque reads in part, “Here on September 20, 1881, at 2:15 a.m., Chester Alan Arthur took his oath of office as 21st President of the United States upon the death of President James A. Garfield, killed by a disgruntled office seeker … On January 16, 1883, President Arthur signed the U.S. Civil Service Act ending the spoils system an creating the American civil service.”

Just a few blocks away, also in Manhattan, at the northeast corner of Madison Square Park, stands a statue of Chester A. Arthur. And in the southeast corner of the same park stands another statue — of Roscoe Conkling.

The assassination of President Garfield

Today’s book report is about James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States. A Republican from Ohio, Garfield was elected in 1880. A few short months after his inauguration he was shot by a crazed lunatic. He died two months later.

President Garfield book review Fred MichmershuizenBack at this time, politicians doled out jobs to their political friends under the patronage system, and Garfield’s killer, Charles Guiteau, was among hundreds of job seekers who had been hounding the president and his cabinet secretaries looking for an appointment. After getting a firm no from Garfield’s newly appointed Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, Guiteau snapped and bought a gun. He stalked Garfield for weeks before catching up with him at a train station. He fired twice, with the first shot grazing Garfield’s shoulder and the second entering his back. This happened right in front of Blaine and two of Garfield’s sons. He was on his way to join his wife, Lucretia, who was recovering from an illness of her own, on a vacation. Garfield probably could have survived the shooing, but, sadly, he received poor medical care. A number of doctors — including Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss (the doctor’s first name was Doctor) — poked the gunshot wound with unwashed fingers and unsterilized instruments. This resulted in bacterial infection, which ultimately killed Garfield.

Garfield had been a surprise presidential nominee in 1880, and his vice presidential running mate, Chester A. Arthur, was an even bigger surprise. At the Republican national convention that year, there was a rift. On one side were the “Stalwarts,” including the powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. The Stalwarts liked the patronage system and wanted it to continue. The Stalwarts were prepared to nominate Ulysses S. Grant, who would return from retirement to run for an unprecedented third term. Meanwhile, the “Half Breeds” advocated for reform and were largely lined up behind Blaine. Garfield had spoken in favor of yet another candidate, John Sherman. When none of the candidates could get the necessary votes to clinch the nomination, many of the delegates switched their votes to Garfield, who got the nomination on the 36th ballot. To placate the Stalwarts, they nominated Arthur (Conkling’s man) for Vice President. These were the days before state-by-state presidential primaries, when a “dark horse” could emerge as a nominee out of a “smoke-filled room.”

Garfield’s immediate predecessor, Rutherford B. Hayes, had tried to end the patronage system but ran into fierce opposition from powerful senators like Conkling. Hayes had fired Arthur, Conkling’s beneficiary, from the Collector job at the New York Custom House, and the dust had not yet settled. When Garfield came into office it was not clear what course he would take, but it soon became apparent when he ignored Conkling’s advice for cabinet appointments. The dispute got even nastier when Garfield appointed his own man as Collector of the New York Customs House.

In what they thought would be an effective power play, Conkling and his fellow New York Senator, Thomas C. Platt, then resigned, assuming they would be immediately re-elected by the New York State legislature, in a show of solidarity and thus prevailing over Garfield, but their plan backfired. Conkling and Platt were not re-elected by the New York legislature and were humiliated, and Garfield emerged triumphant. In those days Senators were elected by state legislatures, not by direct popular vote as they are today.

All of these events and much more are detailed in “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President,” by Candice Millard. This book was a popular best seller, and I found it an absolute pleasure to read.

Here are some additional facts about James A. Garfield:

  • Born in a log cabin!
  • He was the fourth U.S. president to die in office and the second to be assassinated. This was just 16 years after Lincoln had been killed in office.
  • Robert Todd Lincoln, President Lincoln’s eldest and only surviving son, was Garfield’s Secretary of War. Sadly, it was Robert Todd Lincoln who brought in Bliss, who turned out to be a terrible doctor.
  • Guiteau was tried and convicted and later hanged. He claimed temporary insanity at his trial. Before he was executed, Garfield’s killer was shot at twice by would-be Jack Rubys.
  • The train station where Garfield was shot no longer exists.
  • Garfield and Lucretia — he called her “Crete” — had many children, mostly sons.
  • He had a full beard.
  • The A is for Abram, his father’s first name.
  • Just like Hayes, Garfield served in the Civil War. He led the Battle of Middle Creek. Also like Hayes, Garfield was elected to Congress while he was still serving despite not campaigning for office. He later was elected a United States Senator, but he did not serve because he was elected President. Before being elected to national office, Garfield also served as a state senator.
  • Also like Hayes, Garfield saw the Civil War as a battle to end slavery. Throughout his life, he fought for equal rights for blacks. He had been an abolitionist before the war.
  • Garfield’s father died when he was still an infant, and he had grown up in poverty. He worked on a Great Lakes canal boat before getting a formal education and becoming a teacher.
  • Garfield was book smart, and he was an excellent public speaker.
  • Garfield’s widow helped organize what would become Garfield’s presidential library. It became the first presidential library.
  • If he were alive today, Garfield would be a liberal Democrat.

Millard’s book is not a typical presidential biography. It focuses more on the assassination and events leading up to it. The book does not offer much on Garfield’s upbringing, and even less on his service during the Civil War. And I would like to know more about what was going on behind the scenes while Garfield was incapacitated. Nevertheless, the book still offered a great deal of information, and I found it to be a page-turner that I enjoyed immensely. The author weaves in the story of Garfield with his assassin, as well as many other key players in the drama. We also learn about Alexander Graham Bell, who had just invented the telephone and who was brought in to the White House to help locate the bullet with a new experimental device.

Also receiving attention is Joseph Lister — whose medical research on sanitary surgical techniques were completely ignored by Garfield’s doctors and ultimately led to his death. Sadly, that kind of head-in-the-sand stupidity still exists today. Just consider the dire warnings from scientists over greenhouse gas emissions and how they are contributing to the global climate crisis, our country’s current political leadership and the recent withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.

James A. Garfield

Rutherford B. Hayes and the disputed election of 1876

It was a disputed election in 1876. While it appeared that the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden of New York, had won the popular vote, neither he nor the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, had enough electoral votes to claim victory. It turned into a long and nasty fight. The dispute focused on the election returns from three Southern states: Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, where there had been widespread racial voter intimidation and fraud.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President book reviewTo resolve the crisis, President Grant helped form a 15-person committee made up of both Democrats and Republicans to decide which candidate would receive the electoral votes from each of the disputed states. The committee consisted of five members from the House, five from the Senate and five from the Supreme Court. The wrangling lasted until early March, just two days before inauguration. The transition was held in early March back then. To secure his path to the presidency, author Ari Hoogenboom writes in “Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President,” Hayes himself did not make any concessions, but those working for him did make offers.

Shortly after Hayes became president, he withdrew federal troops that had been stationed in South Carolina and Louisiana to protect voting rights, and the governments in those states immediately flipped from Republican to Democratic control. This effectively ended the Reconstruction era following the Civil War.

As Hoogenboom writes, Hayes really had no choice. By this point there was no longer an appetite in the North for continued troop presence in the South. Besides, Hayes believed that over time, with more education and economic opportunities for all, racism would fade and American society would become more egalitarian. How very wrong he was about that. In actuality, getting the federal government out of the way and allowing the South to establish “home rule” led to almost a century more of racial violence and voter suppression.

During his presidency, Hayes pushed for civil service reform. This was his No. 1 issue. He wanted to upend the established practice of patronage appointments for government jobs. Up until this point, Senators and Congressmen were allowed to dispense appointments to their friends and allies under the “spoils system.” In return, those who received such employment had to give a portion of their pay to the political bosses who had gotten them their jobs. It was all very corrupt.

Hayes wanted to change all that. He wanted civil servants to be hired on the basis of competitive written examinations, and he did not want them to be fired for not making payments to politicians. This turned into an epic battle between Hayes and his party, with Congress, and especially with a powerful “Stalwart” Republican Senator from New York, Roscoe Conkling (not Roscoe P. Conkling, who was someone else). Senator Conkling controlled the lucrative New York Custom House, which was run by his lackey, Chester A. Arthur. Hayes ultimately had Arthur fired, setting up an epic battle with Conkling that would one day have immense consequences for the country that nobody could have imagined at the time.

President Hayes also dealt with violent railroad strikes and disputes over the nation’s money supply and the gold standard. He dealt with Indian affairs and with anti-Chinese immigration fervor. He won showdowns with Congress over “riders” aimed at voter suppression that were added by Southern Democrats to spending bills. Later in his presidency, a commission was formed go back and investigate the 1876 election, but that ultimately led nowhere.

Before Hayes became president, he served in the Civil War. He was an officer, and he fought bravely and was instrumental in some key battles. He was also injured numerous times. He was elected to Congress while he was still serving with the Union army in Virginia, but he did not leave the battlefield to campaign. All he did was write home in a letter: “An officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped,” and when these words were made pubic in the newspapers, he was elected resoundingly. After the war Hayes also served as governor of Ohio. He got his start in politics before the war, when he was elected City Solicitor in Cincinnati.

Here are some additional facts about our nation’s 19th president:

  • From the beginning, Hayes had pledged not to run for a second term. He long advocated for a constitutional amendment giving the chief executive a single six-year term.
  • Hayes traveled extensively while in office. He was the first President to visit the West Coast.
  • He had a full beard.
  • The B was for Birchard, his mother’s maiden name.
  • He was married to Lucy, and they had many children, mostly sons. Some of the children died while very young.
  • He banned alcoholic beverages from the White House. He did so in part to mollify teetotalers who wanted to form a new political party that would have harmed the Republicans.
  • Despite not serving booze, the Hayses were fun people who knew how to entertain. They threw lots of parties. And when they went to parties, they were often the first guests to arrive.
  • His father died when he was very young. He was raised by his mother and his uncle, Sardis Birchard. Uncle Sardis acted as a surrogate father to Hayes, and later to his sons. He built them a house.
  • Uncle Sardis was racist.
  • Hayes was not racist and was anti-slavery. He supported John C. Fremont, the anti-slavery candidate, in the 1856 presidential election. And, like his immediate successor, James A. Garfield, who was also from Ohio and also fought for the Union, he viewed the Civil War as a battle to end slavery in our country once and for all.
  • Hayes believed strongly in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments (the “Reconstruction Amendments”), and felt that these amendments should be enforced in the South.
  • Before and after the Civil War, Hayes had many Southerners as friends. He met them in college. He never understood how they could be opposed to racial equality.
  • Although Hayes attended church regularly, he never joined a denomination and never “drank the Kool-Aid.” In other words, he did not fall for crazy ramblings of any preachers.

After his presidency, Hayes stayed active in public life and championed a number of what we would call today “progressive” causes. Education, especially education for blacks, prison reform, and Native American issues were causes he championed. He was involved on committees and foundations, and he traveled extensively. One of the beneficiaries of an educational scholarship he awarded through a fund he stewarded was W.E.B. DuBois, who would go on to become an influential author and civil rights activist. Hayes also continued to advocate for civil service reform and stayed abreast of politics. He also was active in Civil War veterans associations. He died in 1893 at age 70.

As presidential biographies go, I found “Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President” to be well researched and thorough. For some reason though, this was not the most fun book I have ever read. It seemed to take me a long, long time to get through it, and I am not sure why. Despite not enjoying the book much, I did come to like Hayes as a person, especially after he left the presidency and continued to fight for what he believed in.

The reputation of Hayes suffered over time, with many historians considering him a mediocre president. But Hoogenboom argues that this reputation was not warranted. It was not Hayes himself who compromised with the racists in the South over “home rule,” but rather those who had been working on his behalf. Nevertheless, it was the decision of Hayes to pull federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana, effectively ending Reconstruction and leaving the blacks at the mercy of white supremacists and their racial violence, harassment and voter intimidation.

For me, reading about his post-presidency advocacy was most inspiring. Hayes could have simply led a life of leisure after leaving office. He certainly had enough money. Yet, like former President Jimmy Carter does today, Hayes continued to serve. That, for me, counts for so much.

Thoughts after reading about Napoleon

Reading about Napoleon makes me appreciate George Washington even more. And James Madison! It was not long after the United States Constitution had been ratified and Washington inaugurated as our first President that the French people took matters into their own hands. The French Revolution was long, complicated and violent, and it’s hard to comprehend even today. The Jacobins and Girondins fought one another. The French overthrew their Bourbon King, Louis XVI, who incidentally had not long before supported the American Revolution by sending us money, ships and troops! King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette eventually lost their heads to the guillotine, and later a “Committee on Public Safety” controlled by Maximilien Robespierre took over. There was a “Reign of Terror” in which political enemies were beheaded left and right. Eventually Robespierre himself was beheaded, and a five-person “Directory” took over.

Napoleon: A Life

It was in the middle of all this chaos that Napoleon came to power. He eventually declared himself Emperor and conquered most of continental Europe. He even held a coronation in Notre Dame Cathedral, in which he crowned himself and his wife, Josephine, in the presence of the Pope. Along the way he wrote laws called the Civil Code or Napoleonic Code, established a school system, supported the arts and directed large public works projects. He also was a brilliant military commander, whose troop movements and strategies changed forever the manner in which battles were waged and won. Napoleon’s battles would be studied at West Point for generations, including by Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and many others.

Napoleon, who had been trained in artillery, started out early in his military career by invading what is today northern Italy. He then led an army through Egypt and Syria, returning to Paris to help stage a coup in which a three-person “Consulate” took over. But Napoleon controlled everything, and by 1804 he got powerful enough to crown himself Emperor. Europe’s other “crowned heads” frowned on this because they feared they could be overthrown themselves. They formed alliances against him and the wars continued. Napoleon racked up wins all over the place, bringing his reforms and his civil code with him wherever he went.

But he also made mistakes. His invasion of Spain did not go well, meeting with much resistance. His biggest blunder was to invade Russia. He brought 400,000 troops all the way to Moscow, only to have it burned down by the locals before he could do anything there. He was forced to turn back just as a brutally cold winter was beginning. Most of his soldiers died of starvation, disease or frostbite. By the end of the Russian campaign, his army was down to just 40,000. It would be the beginning of the end for Napoleon. (More on his demise in a moment.)

The Bonaparte family tree is broad and complex. Napoleon had seven brothers and sisters. He was second oldest. As he conquered more and more of Europe, he named his siblings and their husbands and wives to rule as sovereigns of the various kingdoms. He named Joseph, his older brother, King of Naples and King of Spain. He made younger brother Louis the King of Holland. Lucien became Prince of Canino, Jerome King of Westphalia. He made his sister Caroline and husband the Queen and King of Naples, and so on.

In 1796 Napoleon married Josephine, a widow who had two children, Eugene and Hortense. Immediately after their marriage, Napoleon went away to war and Josephine cheated on him. He had been sending her a bunch of sappy love letters, but when he found out about his wife’s infidelity he began cheating on her. Napoleon took many mistresses over the years, often paying them large sums of money. He fathered illegitimate children with at least two of the women.

As the years went by and Josephine did not bear Napoleon any children, he decided he needed to divorce her. He asked Tsar Alexander to let him have his younger sister but the Russian ruler said no, so he married Marie Louise, who was the daughter of the Emperor of Austria. Marie Louise bore Napoleon a single child, a son, Napoleon II, also known as the “King of Rome,” who died at age 21. Marie Louise would later cheat on Napoleon with an Austrian general.

Napoleon liked to arrange marriages of his relatives and close associates. He got his brother Louis to marry Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, and they had three children, including Napoleon III, (Napoleon’s nephew, also his step-grandson!) who would later become Emperor of France.

Here are a few additional facts about Napoleon:

  • He was not French! He was born on the island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean.
  • He was born Napoleon Bonaparte, but went by just Napoleon when he became Emperor. Sovereigns go by just their first names. He considered himself to be peers with the other monarchs, but they did not see him that way. Unbeknownst to Napoleon, Tsar Alexander in particular saw him as a nuisance and was waiting for the right moment to get rid of him.
  • In paintings and drawings, Napoleon appears lean and good-looking when he is young, and short and fat when he is old.
  • He was sexist.
  • He admired Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. He aspired to be like them.
  • When he met someone, he had a way of asking the person a number of quick questions in a rapid-fire, matter-of-fact manner.
  • Wherever he went, he plundered artworks and artifacts and sent the loot back to be exhibited in the Louvre.
  • In Egypt he traveled with a group of “savants” who put together an extensive report on the geography, culture and artifacts of the ancient civilization. They also discovered the Rosetta Stone, which would later fall into British hands.
  • Napoleon did not hold deep religious beliefs, but he would often adopt the religious customs of the local population of whatever country he happened to be invading. In Egypt he told those he met he was interested in converting to the Muslim faith. In northern Italy, Catholicism.
  • One of his closest deputies, Jean-Jacques Cambaceres, was gay.
  • Although Napoleon was not an evil dictator bent on genocide (he was not a Hitler), he was responsible for a number of atrocities including a massacre in the Middle East.
  • Because Napoleon needed money for his wars, in 1803 we got the Louisiana Purchase! James Monroe and Robert Livingston negotiated directly with Napoleon during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. It doubled the size of the United States.

After his disastrous invasion of Russia Napoleon was more vulnerable than ever, and a “Sixth Coalition” including Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great Britain united to fight him in what is today Germany. Napoleon won in Dresden but was defeated in Leipzig. The “Allies” offered Napoleon peace terms that would have allowed him to stay in power but give up most of the territory France had conquered. When Napoleon refused the deal, the Allies tightened the screws by invading France and occupying Paris. They forced Napoleon to abdicate and leave France, but they let him become king of the somewhat small, somewhat remote island of Elba — located in the Mediterranean off the coast of Italy. This was Napoleon’s first exile. Before being sent away, Napoleon attempted suicide by taking poison but survived.

Napoleon was on Elba for less than a year, during which time he instituted a number of reforms and public improvements there. Meanwhile, back in Paris, Louis XVIII became king. Remember the Bourbon king Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who had been beheaded during the French Revolution? Their surviving relatives — the Bourbon family — had been hiding in exile all this time! Louis XVI’s son (that’s the Dauphin in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), who would have been King Louis XVII, had died during Napoleon’s reign, and therefore Louis XVIII, who was Louis XVI’s brother, took charge. But he wasn’t much of a leader and made a number of blunders that resulted in taxes and food prices going up. Stupidly, he also put the military on half-pay.

Sensing an opportunity, Napoleon escaped from Elba by boat, landing on the southern coast of France near Cannes (where the film festival is held today). Napoleon had a small band of troops with him, but as he traveled north through France he picked up more and more troops and momentum. By the time he got back to Paris, Louis XVIII and the rest of the Bourbons had run away again, allowing Napoleon to re-form a government, and raise yet another army to go against the Allies — now known as the Seventh Coalition, made up of Austria, Russia, Prussia and Britain. The fighting that resulted culminated in the battle of Waterloo, in what is today Belgium. This period came to be known as the “Hundred Days.” After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon returned briefly to Paris before fleeing to the western coast of France, where he sought asylum aboard a British warship.

Napoleon wanted to go to the United States or even to London, but the British decided to send him to the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic — much smaller and much more remote than Elba. This was Napoleon’s second exile. He was allowed to take a small number of followers with him to St. Helena, including a pastry chef and a lamp-lighter. But Longwood House, where he was to reside, was damp and dreary and was infested with rats and mosquitoes. The British named a custodian to watch over him, someone who was unnecessarily mean. Napoleon died six years later of stomach cancer. In 1840 his body was brought back to Paris and entombed in an elaborate monument.

I learned so much reading “Napoleon: A Life,” the 810-page biography by Andrew Roberts. Published in 2014, this book is complete with helpful maps and beautiful color images. I read the paperback edition. I very much enjoyed this book. The author, a British historian, drew on a recently compiled collection of 33,000 letters and referred to tremendous amounts of other source material. The tome is divided into three parts: Rise, Mastery and Denouement.

George Washingon His ExcellencyBack to George Washington. The biography “His Excellency” by Joseph Ellis had me crying on just about every page, but I did not shed a single tear for Napoleon. Washington had been as popular in America as Napoleon was in France, and had he wanted to Washington could have ruled in a similar manner here. But Washington was a bigger man by giving up power and going back to his farm. Another gift Washington gave us was the policy of neutrality when it came to international affairs. Around the time of the French Revolution, many here in America wanted us to go to war with France against Britain. What a horrible error that would have been. I also came to appreciate the wisdom of James Madison and the other Founding Fathers, who wrote a constitution for our own country complete with separation of powers, checks and balances and provisions for peaceful transition of government from one administration to another.

For the past two years almost, I have been reading biographies of the U.S. presidents, but I wanted to take a detour and read about Napoleon. I’m glad I did. I noticed this book while looking through the biography section at Barnes and Noble, and it caught my eye. Learning Napoleon’s story has enhanced my appreciation of our nation’s founders.

 

Ulysses S. Grant

It was what General Ulysses S. Grant did after the battle of The Wilderness that changed things. By May 1864, the Civil War had been going on for more than three years. The loss of life to this point had been more than anyone could have imagined. It was already apparent that the South was not going to be able to win the war, but the Confederates were trying to drag the war on longer, hoping to make the conflict so costly to the North that the voting public would tire of the war and throw Lincoln out of office, to be replaced by someone who would end the war. The stakes were enormous. More than just the preservation of the Union was at stake. Ending the war at this point would have re-enslaved the 3.5 million people who had been freed on January 1, 1863, by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Grant by Matthew Brady
President Grant, 1870
By Mathew Brady – Library of Congress, Public Domain

 

By this point Lincoln had already replaced his top generals numerous times. McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and Meade had all failed to prosecute the war with the urgency and vigor that Lincoln wanted. After Grant achieved key victories for the Union at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Lincoln summoned him to the nation’s capital and named him Lieutenant General. Grant was the first since George Washington to hold the rank.

The Wilderness was Grant’s very first battle after being put in charge of all Union armies and his first faceoff with Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It did not turn out well for the Union. But unlike his predecessors who had all retreated north after suffering large casualties in battle, Grant decided to move his army farther south. There was to be no turning back this time. Grant was not one to make excuses, to blame others or to give up. Final victory was still a long way off, but Grant knew it was coming. It came the following spring, when Grant accepted Lee’s surrender at the home of Wilmer McClean, in the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

After the war Grant stayed on as commander of the U.S. Army, serving under President Andrew Johnson. Grant served briefly as Secretary of War during Johnson’s dispute with Congress over the Tenure of Office Act. He was elected President in 1868 and then re-elected in 1872 by wide margins both times in both the popular and electoral votes. He never campaigned. In his first inaugural address, he called for the ratification of the 15th Amendment granting blacks the right to vote, and he spoke out for the rights of Native Americans. He stumbled early on with less-than-ideal cabinet appointments. Grant himself was not corrupt, but some of his cabinet secretaries became involved in various scandals, which got worse in his second term. One of Grant’s best picks was Hamilton Fish as Secretary of State, whom grant had plucked out of retirement. Fish had been governor of New York and a United States Senator and turned out to be an excellent Secretary of State. He served through both of Grant’s presidential terms.

During the late 1860s the Ku Klux Klan emerged. Grant recognized the KKK immediately for what it was — a domestic hate group intent on using terrorism to prevent blacks from exercising their rights as citizens to vote. Grant formed the Justice Department and directed it to fight the Klan. He went so far as to declare martial law and to use federal troops in parts of the South to enforce voting rights.

Here are some additional facts about Grant:

  • He married Julia Dent, and they had four children. Julia’s family owned slaves, but Grant’s family was anti-slavery and his parents boycotted the wedding.
  • He was born in Ohio. After marrying Julia he built a house near her family in Missouri, calling it “Hardscrabble.” They later moved to Galena, Illinois.
  • His given name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but from birth he was called Ulysses. His mother got the name Ulysses from a French novel about the Greek general Ulysses. When Grant got to West Point with the initials H.U.G. on a trunk, he realized that was not going to work. There was too much teasing from the other cadets. The senator who had appointed Grant to West Point had used Ulysses Simpson Grant (Simpson was his mother’s maiden name) so he went with the initials U.S., which were interpreted as “United States” Grant, and, later, “Unconditional Surrender” Grant.
  • Like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce and many others, Grant served in the Mexican American War. He was a quartermaster.
  • Several of the groomsmen in Grant’s wedding later fought against him as officers in the Confederate army.
  • Later in life, Grant became friends with Mark Twain.
  • As my cousin Lisa would be pleased to know, Grant loved horses! One of his favorites was named Cincinnati.

After Grant left office, he and Julia went on a grand overseas tour, traveling extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Orient. Upon returning to the United States, he would have run for President again in 1880, but the Republicans nominated James A. Garfield instead. Grant eventually retired to New York City. He and one of his sons later invested with a Bernie Maddow-type swindler, and Grant lost all his money. He spent the final part of his life writing his memoirs, which, thanks to the help of Mark Twain, netted enough money for Julia to live on after his death. He died of throat cancer just days after finishing the manuscript. Today he and Julia rest in a massive mausoleum in New York City.

Grant by Ronald C. White“American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant,” by Ronald C. White (pictured, the book I read) is one of two major biographies of Grant published recently. The other is by Ron Chernow. Both are what are often called rehabilitative, meaning the authors go back and re-examine a person’s reputation that has fallen over the years. Some historians have looked down upon Grant for a number of offenses, both real and imagined. Among them are that he was not as smart as Lee (Grant graduated 21st out of 39 in his class at West Point, while Lee graduated 2nd). Others have postulated that Grant was too indifferent to the large number of troops who were killed, and that he was a drunk. White argues forcibly against these accusations.

Having thoroughly enjoyed White’s previous biography of Lincoln, I decided to read his telling of Grant’s life story as well, and I was richly rewarded. “American Ulysses” was a page-turner, with many helpful maps, photographs and illustrations. He also presents Grant as a complete human being, describing his family life and even the books he read and the things he said to his friends and colleagues. And yes, I cried in the end!

In reading this book I got to know the general quite well. I can therefore say confidently that had a President Grant been in office when a group of white supremacists held a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, the response from the White House would have been quite different.