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Jackson is also convinced that Great Britain is interested in gaining Texas as a new possession and then using the land as a base for further expansion into the Americas.
On March 3, 1837, Andrew Jackson’s last full day as president, he states that his only regret as president is not shooting John C. Calhoun.
As president, he governed capably, with unbending will. Future presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Donald Trump will publicly reference his presidency as a model for their own.
On June 8, 1845, at the age of seventy-eight, Jackson dies of edema, tuberculosis, and heart failure. He is surrounded by family and friends. The former president does not free his slaves upon dying. Within two days, more than three thousand mourners travel to Hermitage for Jackson’s funeral. Poll, the African gray parrot, is present as the service begins but is removed by order of the minister when he begins swearing during the Presbyterian liturgy.
The sycophantic Martin “Little Magician” Van Buren is elected the eighth president of the United States. The election takes place between November 3 and December 7, 1836. He will not make anyone forget Andrew Jackson.
In the face of the panic, Martin Van Buren still has time to make bold changes to America’s financial system. But he will do nothing. Instead, the five-foot-six president acquires a new nickname: “Martin Van Ruin.”
Van Buren and the physically declining Andrew Jackson ride to his inauguration in a wooden coach constructed from planks of the fabled USS Constitution warship—symbolism not lost on those aware that this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the US Constitution. As the carriage parades through the streets of Washington, soldiers on horseback provide escort, followed by a marching band playing patriotic tunes. Twenty thousand people line the streets on this March morning, warmed by a “balmy vernal sun,” in the words of one eyewitness.
This is the first time that has ever been done. As a boy in upstate New York, the new president’s family was financially middling but owned six slaves. Thus, Van Buren is not opposed to the practice. His speech makes this clear: “I must go into the presidential chair being a flexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding states, and also with the determination to resist the slightest interference with [slavery] in the states where it exists.” This is obvious pandering to the
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Just after Jackson lost the 1824 election to John Quincy Adams, the savvy Van Buren steps up to console Old Hickory—telling Jackson that he could unseat Adams in 1828. He quickly ingratiates himself with the general and begins undermining the Adams administration.
His father served in the American Revolution even as Martin’s birth in 1782 will make him the first president to not be alive during that conflict.
Among Martin Van Buren’s many nicknames is “Old Kinderhook,” in reference to his town of birth. This is often shortened to OK. Coincidentally, Andrew Jackson prints this abbreviation on official documents. When he wants to approve something as all correct, he simply writes OK. Despite his proficiency in Latin and law, Jackson is such a poor speller that he believes all correct is spelled ole kurrek. Thus, OK enters the American lexicon as a verbal affirmation and eventually becomes the most used word in the entire world.4
So, in a single campaign, Americans acquire keep the ball rolling and booze.
There is, in the Washington, DC, of 1841, a large area where human waste—“night soil,” as it is known—is dumped in a field near the White House. The city has no sewer system. This excrement is collected from chamber pots and outhouses and then hauled to this field each day by government workers. The refuse becomes a breeding ground for the Salmonella bacteria responsible for typhus and its derivative, paratyphus. Together, these are known as endemic fever and wreak havoc on an individual’s gastrointestinal tract.
A small stream runs through the middle of this field of waste, forming a marsh. Incredibly, this is also the main water supply for the White House, which is seven blocks downstream. Weakened by the sickness brought on by his long walks in the cold and rain, Harrison’s body is not strong enough to fight off the bacteria in his drinking water. Dr. Miller’s choice to administer enemas to President Harrison is unfortunate because these perforate the ulcers in the intestines caused by Salmonella. The bacteria then enter the bloodstream. This, in turn, makes the president’s body septic. And that is
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Vice President John Tyler is visiting family in Williamsburg, Virginia. Two days later, he returns to Washington and is sworn in as the tenth president of the United States. “Tyler Too” will spell trouble for the expanding United States. He is a man of divided loyalties, and the damage he will soon do will echo throughout history.
After William Henry Harrison dies on April 4, 1841, things begin to move quickly. The cabinet immediately votes that Tyler will serve as “acting president” until they can determine a successor. These men take their orders from Senator Clay, who believes he alone has the power to choose America’s next leader.
At sunrise on April 5, a messenger from Washington knocks on the door of Tyler’s Williamsburg, Virginia, home to pass along the grim news. Tyler tells his family over an early breakfast and then begins the 150-mile journey to Washington. He travels twenty-one hours by steamship and then train. He arrives at 4:00 a.m. the next morning, eager to be sworn in. Tyler immediately summons Federal District Court judge William Cranch to his room at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel to deliver the oath.
As a sign of respect for William Henry Harrison, the new president doesn’t fire a single member of Harrison’s cabinet. This is a mistake. Very quickly, they will try to undermine him. That very day, the cabinet informs Tyler that he must put all important presidential decisions to a vote of this advisory group, letting the majority decide policy. Tyler refuses. “I shall be pleased to avail myself to your counsel and advice,” he tells the group during the first White House meeting. “But I can never consent to being dictated what I can and cannot do.”
Tyler now espouses the ideals of a Jacksonian Democrat. So, a man who was elected vice president on the Whig ticket has jumped to the opposition. Tyler immediately supports closing the national bank, thereby giving states more economic power. This is exactly the opposite of Whig policy.
Clay orders that John Tyler be kicked out of the Whig Party. The president is branded a traitor. Senator Clay’s declaration is sent to newspapers throughout America. Clay and the Whigs then demand that Tyler resign the presidency. He refuses. But Clay is not done. One year later, as John Tyler vetoes yet another bill endorsed by the Whigs, Congress begins the first proceedings to impeach a president. But there are not enough votes to do that. So, Henry Clay is forced to settle for a simple censure attempt by the Congress.
Now, alone in her room, Letitia Tyler has another stroke. She dies the following morning. Thus, Letitia becomes the youngest First Lady to pass away while her husband is in office.
Months before his wife’s death, President Tyler is introduced to the beautiful twenty-two-year-old New York socialite Julia Gardiner at a White House reception. He is smitten, as are many of the other men in the room. Julia soon receives marriage proposals from two congressmen and a Supreme Court justice. The young woman returns to Washington the following February. The now-single president invites Julia to a private card game at the White House. Afterward, he playfully chases her around the tables.
He proposes two weeks after the card game. The couple weds in New York City one year later, making John Tyler the first president to get married while in office. Only after their nuptials are complete does Tyler release the news to the American public.
Julia Tyler also enjoys drinking at public functions. This angers the growing temperance movement. The First Lady is proud of being nontraditional. She drives a coach pulled by four well-groomed horses, keeps a pair of Irish wolfhounds as pets, and enjoys receiving guests while sitting in an armchair slightly elevated above the rest of the room.
Tyler leaves Washington on March 3, 1845, returning to his estate called Sherwood Forest near Richmond, Virginia. Julia accompanies him on the 110-mile journey south. The now former First Lady is happy to be leaving the White House—she wants to start having children. Her northern roots are in the distant past. Julia is looking forward to becoming a southern belle. John and Julia sire seven children at Sherwood Forest, where he runs the plantation. The rapid birthing means John Tyler is now the father of sixteen, the most offspring for an American president.
Tyler dies of a stroke while staying at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond. He is seventy-one years old.
Her husband’s death shocks Julia. And the war forces her to return to family in New York. Meanwhile, Union troops capture Sherwood Forest and free the family slaves, turning the mansion into a desegregated school. Julia Tyler remains in New York after the war, losing much of her fortune in the Panic of 1873. However, she eventually repurchases Sherwood Forest from the Bank of Virginia. It remains in the Tyler family to this day.
His accomplishments in office were scant, despite the addition of Texas to the Union. His defection to the Confederate cause sullies the presidential legacy. Tyler entered Washington having few friends and left it with no friends.
President Polk has been in office a little more than a year. He has promised to serve only one term and is working so hard that his wife, Sarah, feels he is headed to an early grave—which he is.
At 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.
President Polk owns dozens of slaves and sees no reason why the practice should not expand westward.
Americans are traveling in wagons and horseback across the continent to settle Pacific regions like the Oregon Territory, which Polk is intent on seizing from Great Britain. 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.”
President Polk intentionally aggravates the situation on January 13, 1846, by ordering General Zachary Taylor to lead troops into contested land. Polk orders Taylor to specifically claim the Rio Grande as part of US territory.
“It looks like the government sent a small force on purpose to start a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of the country as it chooses.”
It has been a dazzling first year in office for Polk, a man whom few thought would make it to adulthood, let alone be elected president. Perpetually ill as a child, he frustrated his rugged planter father, Samuel. James Knox Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795, with his family moving to Columbia, Tennessee, soon after. He is a weak child, unable to perform manual labor on the plantation and showing little interest in his schoolwork.
Samuel Polk and his son ride 250 miles on horseback from their Tennessee plantation to the office of Kentucky surgeon Ephraim McDowell. The Edinburgh-trained doctor is at the forefront of the new field of abdominal medicine. McDowell will later write that he found the teenager to be “uncouth and uneducated, a meager boy with pallid cheeks, oppressed and worn down with disease.” After a consultation, seventeen-year-old James is led into an operating theater.
James is given ample portions of brandy to dull the coming pain. The memory of this moment is so intense that Polk will never again drink spirits. Using a sharp knife, Dr. McDowell slices open the perineum and inserts a slim, pointed tool known as a gorget through the prostate gland and into the bladder, where he successfully removes a urinary stone through a process known as a cystolithotomy. The surgery renders James Polk sterile—and perhaps impotent—for the rest of his life. However, despite the condition, he becomes a diligent student. The future president never weighs more than 135 pounds
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Polk, meanwhile, openly advocates Texas statehood, going to war with the British to annex Oregon, and acquiring California. Amazingly, Americans agree strongly with the small man from Tennessee. His longtime mentor, Jackson, firmly suggests that his fellow Democrats select Polk as their presidential candidate—which they do.
He wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College by solid margins.
James K. Polk has no hobbies, avocations, or interests beyond politics. Even his enemies marvel at the intensity of his nonstop work habits. Yet in his four years in office, President Polk is that rare chief executive who accomplishes everything he sets out to do.
Andrew Jackson will be remembered as significant, while James K. Polk is all but forgotten. Jackson’s former home, Hermitage, sees millions of visitors a year. Polk’s family residence in Columbia, Tennessee, receives just a few hundred.
Cholera finds him anyway. The disease is spread through contaminated drinking water. Symptoms include long bouts of vomiting and diarrhea leading to severe dehydration and then death. Unfortunately, this is unknown to medical professionals in 1849, so the standard course of treatment is laxatives—a practice that only increases the dehydrated condition. James K. Polk contracts cholera in early June and is dead within two weeks.
three months after leaving office. He is fifty-three years old. “I love you, Sarah,” are his last words. “For all eternity, I love you.”
President Taylor’s body is placed inside a coffin, and the lid is closed. Suddenly, Margaret demands it be reopened so she can have one more look at her husband of forty years. The casket lid is dutifully raised, then closed again. Whereupon Margaret repeats the request. Two more times. It will be 141 years before the casket is opened again so the world can know for certain whether or not Zachary Taylor has been murdered.
President Taylor’s sudden death is a national shock. Many Americans are refusing to believe Old Rough and Ready was killed by ice water and a bowl of cherries. Conspiracy theories abound saying pro-slavery factions found a way to murder him.
Three months later, as his casket is moved to his family burial plot in Louisville, questions about Taylor’s death linger.
His short time in office did not allow him to achieve anything of consequence. His foreign policy, in which he had no previous experience, was almost nonexistent. Yet the question of who killed Zachary Taylor never goes away.
Now, 141 years after his sudden passing, there is new evidence that Taylor may not have died from cherries. By the order of a local judge, his body is being removed from its Tennessee marble crypt so tests can be performed.
Samples of hair, bone, and fingernails are taken, and then the coffin is closed and immediately returned to the president’s mausoleum. Two weeks later, the test results are announced. No conspiracy. Death by bad food and water.
Born in a log cabin on the New York frontier in 1800, President Fillmore is the second of eight children and is named for his mother, Phoebe Millard. His father, Nathaniel, leases land as a tenant farmer. Young Millard’s childhood is demanding and poor; he works on the small family farm, occasionally attends one-room schools, and endures extreme poverty. At fourteen, Nathaniel Fillmore apprentices his son to a local cloth maker, but Millard chafes at the menial labor and quits.
