More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 6 - June 21, 2025
William Henry Harrison’s impact on presidential campaigning can also be seen in terms and words still used today. It was the first mass public campaign for the presidency.
His father is Benjamin Harrison, a former Virginia governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Many, such as Whig Party leader Henry Clay, do not believe the Constitution allows for a vice president to automatically assume the highest office in the land.
It is during the presidency of John Tyler that the United States of America actually begins to dissolve.
Tyler is a virulent slaver, born into a landed Virginia family.
The agenda is tariff protection for cotton and tobacco planters, states’ rights, and pro-slavery protection—ideals that will drive the impending Civil War.
the center of Polk’s presidential agenda is an ambitious plan to double the size of the United States. War with Mexico, should it be successful, will secure lands known as Upper California, Colorado, and New Mexico.
A new doctrine known as Manifest Destiny guides the president’s thinking.
This belief holds that America should span all territories between the Atlantic and the Pacific—“sea to shining sea.”
in his four years in office, President Polk is that rare chief executive who accomplishes everything he sets out to do.
The war with Mexico is a rousing victory. Most importantly, it adds one million square miles to the size of the United States.
Millard Fillmore is the last Whig president. By 1856, the party will cease to exist, undone by the Compromise of 1850. From now on, every chief executive will be affiliated with either the Republican or Democratic Party.
Perhaps the only positive of the Johnson administration is the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Secretary of State William Seward, now recovered from the assassination attempt on the night Lincoln was attacked, brokers the sale. The US government gives the Russians $7.2 million ($149 million today), and residents are granted three years to decide whether they would like to remain in Alaska as American citizens or go to Russia.
The president suspends habeas corpus, leading many to call him a dictator. Grant does not care. His goal is nothing less than complete destruction of the Ku Klux Klan.
He has been busy these past fourteen months, overseeing the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and creating a new cabinet office known as the Justice Department.
many things changed in the Grant administration. He created Yellowstone National Park. Oversaw the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Advocated for legal reforms that benefit women.
When all the votes are counted, Democrat Samuel Tilden wins the popular vote 4,286,808 to 4,034,142—a victory of 50.9 percent to 47.9 percent. Yet the Electoral College is a different story. Tilden: 184. Hayes: 185. Immediately, there are widespread reports of election cheating. Democrats in Congress seek to block the counting of electoral votes. The final result is delayed for months as a special bipartisan commission investigates. Hayes is finally named president on March 2, 1877, just three days before the inauguration. Democrats still refuse to believe he won, pointing to Tilden’s enormous
...more
the Naturalization Act of 1790 does not allow Chinese immigrants to seek citizenship, which is limited to “free white persons.”
Congress passes a bill stipulating that no Chinese person be allowed to enter the United States for a period of twenty years.
This was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It bans laborers from immigrating but makes some exceptions for “non-laborers” such as diplomats and merchants.
President Arthur vetoes the l...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
He ultimately gives in when a bill reducing the exclusion to ten years...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. It demands that merit, not patronage, will be the basis for federal hiring.
Cleveland is the first Democrat to win the presidency in twenty-eight years.
The main issue in the campaign is tariffs.
Harrison supports high protections while Cleveland wants to increase foreign trade by lowering them.
It is Grover Cleveland who gets the most popular votes on Election Day, but he loses the Elector...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The Sherman Silver Purchase Act will lead to the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1893. Harrison’s mistake is switching government purchases from gold to silver. As the gold market falters, anxious Americans withdraw their funds from banks. More than four hundred financial institutions close. Thousands of Americans are thrown out of work. That dooms the Harrison administration.
The fight in Cuba defines William McKinley’s presidency.
On November 6, 1900, William McKinley is reelected to a second term. His new vice president is war hero Teddy Roosevelt.
“Teddy’s Bear” is an object of humor. The new term is coined after a recent presidential hunting trip to Mississippi, where Roosevelt refused to shoot a captive brown bear. Cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew a picture of the moment, leading a candy-store owner to sell a toy with the name Teddy Bear. It is now a global sensation.
Theodore Roosevelt is the youngest president in history,
Roosevelt notices that Spanish accuracy is flawed. Their cannons are not positioned to execute “plunging fire,” meaning that the rounds will fly over the intended targets. Also, it appears to him that Spanish trenches are not in proper tactical position, making it hard for marksmen to fire down the slope.
believing only an all-out charge can dislodge the Spanish, he gallops his horse toward the enemy lines, exhorting his men to follow.
Kettle Hill is not steep, but it is a long half mile to the Spanish position. A trio of rapid-fire US Gatling guns provide cover for Roosevelt and his assault wave. Men grow exhausted from the heat. The pace slows. At the very top, the fighting is hand to hand. But the hill is taken.
Roosevelt immediately crosses the steep ravine to the adjacent San Juan Hill, where the fighting is still intense. His men are spent, so only five follow. A short time later, San Juan Hill falls.
He immediately sets out to reform corruption.
Three very powerful men, Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and financier J. P. Morgan, are especially worried.
These “robber barons,” as they are known, come up with an ingenious solution to muzzle Governor Roosevelt: get ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The McKinley campaign will benefit from the war hero’s popularity while the barons will no longer have an adversary in the New York state house. All goes according to plan until President McKinley is shot dead.
few doubt Teddy Roosevelt when he states, “No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way.”
“All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.”
He opens a new cabinet position known as the Department of Commerce and Labor to oversee corporate behavior.
he orders the Department of Justice to prosecute a J. P. Morgan company known as Northern Securities for violating antitrust laws.
Roosevelt goes on to regulate railroad rates and even food, demanding federal inspection of meatpacking plants. He supports the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which allowed Congress to create the Food and Drug Administration.
Robber baron Henry Clay Frick will look back on Roosevelt’s accomplishments with regret: “He got down on his knees for us. We bought the son of a bitch. Then he did not stay bought.”
In Panama, the canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is being dug through thick jungle.
Roosevelt’s love of the outdoors leads him to create the national Forest Service to protect vast swaths of American land. And the president is instrumental in brokering peace between Japan and Russia in 1905 after their recent war. He brings both sides to the negotiation table in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—an act that will win him the Nobel Peace Prize.
The disenfranchisement of black citizens continues.
Theodore Roosevelt is aware of the situation and sends a signal by inviting civil rights leader Booker T. Washington to a White House dinner in 1901. This is considered scandalous by some, for segregation is still very much the norm in the American South—and never before has a black man eaten dinner with a president as a guest at the White House.
