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                        George Washington (1789 - 1797)

    If for no other reason, as the first chief executive, George Washington was
 destined to play a decisive role in defining the nature of the Presidency.
 Denied a regular commission in the British army, he was eventually made
 commander-in-chief by the Continental Congress in 1775.  As the primary hero
 of the American revolution, he became the father of his country.  Sometimes he
 is also referred to as the "Cincinnatus of the West," named after the Roman
 citizen-soldier who laid down his plow to come to the aid of his country.

    Citizens trusted Washington.  Although he could have been made a king, he
 refused to abuse power.  His chairmanship of the Constitutional Convention of
 1787 was crucial in the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He was
 inaugurated as President of the U.S. on April 30, 1789 in New York, and was
 re-elected in 1792, but refused to consider a third term, retiring to Mount
 Vernon in Virginia to spend his final days with his wife, Martha.

    Rather than looking to the Old World, Washington looked West to the New
 World throughout his life.  He had the ability to pick and rely on unusually
 gifted advisers, in particular Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
 Whereas his advisers were often emotional over issues facing the new country,
 Washington is almost always pictured as a man in total control.  He governed
 by reason.

    He began the precedent of delivering a Farewell Address to the nation at
 the conclusion of his administration.  His has become one of the two best
 remembered of these addresses in U.S.  history.  He warned about the dangers
 of "factions" (political parties) and avoiding "entangling alliances."  The
 Framers of the Constitution did not foresee the development of political
 parties which began in 1800, and the Old World was largely a story of
 alliances among countries that usually ended in wars.

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                            John Adams (1797 - 1801)

    As the second President of the United States, John Adams was destined to be
 frustrated, as many successors to great Presidents often were.  Yet he had
 previous experience in this sort of situation in his position as the first
 Vice President of the U.S.  (1789-1797).  "Mrs. President" was the
 uncomplimentary nickname given to Abigail Adams because of her influence on
 her husband.  Although he was frustrated in office, John Adams lived the
 longest of all the Presidents to date (90 years).

    One of the primary reasons for his defeat for re-election was his support
 for the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which were laws passed by Congress to
 curtail criticism of the Federalists who dominated the federal government.
 Under these laws, critics could be fined and imprisoned merely for expressing
 negative views of the government, the President, or Congress.

    Just months before the end of his term, Adams became the first President to
 live in the White House although only a half dozen rooms had been completed.
 Adams worked until the very end of his administration and even made
 appointments up to his last day in office.

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                         Thomas Jefferson (1801 - 1809)

    Thomas Jefferson's Presidency was only a small part of his contributions
 to the American republic.  He is the closest thing to a Renaissance man in
 the Oval Office (the Renaissance refers to the humanistic revival of
 classical art, literature and learning that originated in Italy in the 14th
 century).  Jefferson could read classics in Greek and Latin, play the
 violin, and practice law, politics, and architecture.  He was the author of
 the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute on religious
 freedom that became the basis for religious freedom in the First Amendment
 to the U.S. Constitution.  Jefferson also established the University of
 Virginia and designed his home Monticello which is considered one of the
 greatest examples of native American architecture.

    George Washington made Jefferson the country's first Secretary of State.
 Jefferson's belief in the consent of the governed, as opposed to executive
 control by Alexander Hamilton, often led to conflict.  He resigned from
 Washington's cabinet in 1793.

    In 1796, Jefferson became the Democrat-Republican (anti-Federalist)
 candidate for President, but lost to John Adams.  In the election of 1800,
 Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in electoral college votes.  The House of
 Representatives elected Jefferson.  Some of his key accomplishments during his
 administration involved expanding the nation geographically.  He arranged the
 Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

    Although he is one of the great Presidents honored on Mount Rushmore,
 Jefferson did not even mention his Presidency among the achievements
 listed on his self-written gravestone epitaph.

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                          James Madison (1809 - 1817)

    Perhaps even more than Thomas Jefferson, the fourth President of the U.S.,
 James Madison, earned his reputation before assuming the Presidency. He was
 the chief recorder at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  His most famous
 work is the Federalist Papers written with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.
 The Federalist Papers were a series of newspaper articles that explained and
 defended the U.S. Constitution in order to gain its ratification.  Madison
 became known as "the Father of the Constitution."

    Madison was a "strict constructionist" who opposed the free interpretation
 of the Constitution by the Federalists.  Although he is often accused of too
 much deference toward Congress and thus leading us into the War of 1812, he
 faithfully adhered to maintaining civil liberties at home during this war,
 unlike later Presidents.

    His wife, Dolley, was one of the best known First Ladies of the nineteenth
 century.  When the British invaded Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812,
 she refused to leave the White House until many White House treasures were
 safely taken with her.  Some people called her "Lady Presidentess."

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                           James Monroe (1817 - 1825)

    James Monroe represents the last of the so-called Virginia dynasty of
 Presidents (five were from Virginia).  Like James Madison, he had close ties
 to Thomas Jefferson with whom he studied law.  Monroe lived within sight of
 Monticello.  Jefferson sent him to Europe as minister to France in 1803. There
 he helped Robert Livingston to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase.

    Monroe's administration became known as the "Era of Good Feelings."  Many
 boundary issues were resolved, and he supported the antislavery position that
 led to the Missouri Compromise.  He is the only American to have a foreign
 capital named after him, (Monrovia, the capital of Liberia). The most
 significant contribution of his administration was the "Monroe Doctrine,"
 which became a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

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                        John Quincy Adams (1825 - 1829)

    As the son of John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams was fated to become
 a part of the political world.  Yet, he is better known for his public service
 before and after his term as President than anything he did during it. Serving
 as Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825, he helped to draft the Monroe
 Doctrine, and is generally regarded as the greatest Secretary of State in
 American history.  After the White House, he became the only former President
 to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives (1831 to 1848).  Adams developed
 a reputation as "Old Man Eloquent" during these years as a result of his
 opposition to slavery, the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.  Based on
 his legislative support in the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution,
 he is sometimes credited as the "Father of the Smithsonian."

    Because his personal expansion of executive powers was strongly opposed, he
 was defeated in 1828 by Andrew Jackson.  However, before this event took
 place, he found himself involved in a scandal.  Like his father, he regularly
 exercised by skinny-dipping in the Potomac.  One morning a reporter, Anne
 Royall, spotted him in the river.  She sat on his clothes until the President
 agreed to grant her an interview.  As a result of this, Royall has earned the
 reputation as the "Mother of Yellow Journalism" for forcing the President to
 parade in a less than dignified manner in public.

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                          Andrew Jackson (1829 - 1837)

    As the first President elected as a Democrat, Andrew Jackson represented an
 expansion of the electorate to the common man.  He was the first President
 born west of the Allegheny Mountains, as well as the first to be born in a log
 cabin.  The frontier west got its chance in the White House.  Jacksonian
 democracy represented a new phase in broader political participation in
 American politics.

    Jackson was a fighter.  He was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in
 1815 when his 6,000 backwoods, rag-tag army defeated General Sir Edward
 Pakenham's 12,000 British troops.  His nickname, Old Hickory, derived from a
 reputation that he was tough as hickory wood.  He supposedly fought in some
 100 duels.  As President, he was the target of the first attempt to
 assassinate an incumbent President.

    He introduced rotation in office, the so-called "spoils system," which was
 based on the assumption that the average person could perform jobs as well as
 aristocrats.  Always suspicious of privilege, he ruined the Bank of the United
 States by depositing federal funds with state banks.  He also killed the
 congressional caucus for nominating Presidential candidates by replacing it
 with the national party convention in 1832.

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                         Martin Van Buren (1837 - 1841)

    Martin Van Buren represents another President who suffered due to a strong
 predecessor.  Although he was Andrew Jackson's hand picked choice to succeed
 him, as well as Jackson's alter ego, he became a one-term President.  As a New
 York politician, he gained eastern support for Jackson in 1828, and was made
 his Secretary of State.  He was elected Vice President in 1832.

    As a consummate politician, Van Buren earned the nickname "the Little
 Magician."  He was also called "Old Kinderhook" based on the name of the New
 York city where he was born.  The expression "O.K." originated from his
 supporters who referred to him by the initials in his nickname.  As President,
 he established the independent treasury system, but a five-year national
 depression that began with the panic of 1837 led to his defeat.

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                         William Henry Harrison (1841)

    As the President who served the shortest term in the Oval Office--just 31
 days, William Henry Harrison did not get the opportunity to accomplish much.
 He was the first President to die in office.  His wife, Anna, is the only
 First Lady who never lived in the official Presidential residence.

    Harrison is better known for his Presidential campaign in 1840.  As the
 Whig candidate, his party turned Presidential politics into mass
 entertainment.  Perhaps the most effective campaign slogan ever was developed
 in the campaign, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too."  The campaign also launched the
 slogan, "Keep the ball rolling," after a large paper ball that served as the
 Whig campaign banner for the 1840 campaign was "rolled" from Kentucky to
 Baltimore where the Whig nominating convention was held.

    Harrison was the only President to study medicine, but he did not graduate.
 Instead he switched from medicine to a military career. While he was
 delivering the longest inaugural speech in American history--one hour and 40
 minutes, Harrison caught pneumonia.  His death led to the legend of the
 Shawnee Curse.  Every President elected on a "0" year, since 1840, has died in
 office--in an odd year, or an attempt on his life has been made.  The curse
 was placed on Harrison, the leader of the American forces at the Battle of the
 Thames during the War of 1812 in revenge for the death of Tecumseh, the
 Shawnee Indian chief.

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                           John Tyler  (1841 - 1845)

    In 1840, John Tyler was elected Vice President.  After William Henry
 Harrison died, he became the first Vice President to succeed to the Presidency
 on the death of his predecessor.  He is the only President to have no Vice
 President during his entire term.  His critics referred to him as "His
 Accidency."

    Tyler's reputation has suffered from his failure to gain party support for
 his positions on political issues.  Although he accepted renomination in 1844,
 he withdrew before the election.  His reputation has suffered additionally due
 to the fact that he supported secession during the Civil War, sat on the
 provisional Confederate Congress and was elected as a member of the
 Confederate House, but died before it met.

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                         James Knox Polk  (1845 - 1849)

    During the one term that James Polk served in the White House, a lot of
 significant events took place and the President demonstrated his control of
 them.  He was an expansionist who believed in America's "manifest destiny" to
 control all the territory between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  After the
 Mexican-American war Polk annexed California and much of the Southwest.  He
 also acquired the Oregon territory.  As a result of this expansionism, the
 United States nearly doubled in size.

    Prior to the Presidency, Polk was a member of Congress from 1825 to 1839
 serving the last four years as the Speaker.  Because of his expansionist
 beliefs, the Democrats ran him as their dark horse candidate, making him the
 first such candidate in American history.  The best known slogan of the 1844
 Presidential campaign was "54-40 or fight," referring to the boundaries he
 wanted for the Oregon territory.

    Unfortunately, Polk didn't enjoy the Oval Office and became the first
 President to voluntarily retire after one term.  He had exhausted himself,
 dying 103 days after serving in the White House.

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                         Zachary Taylor  (1849 - 1850)

    Military heroes are promising candidates for high office when political
 parties want to capture the White House.  As a result, although Zachary Taylor
 had never held a political office or even voted in any election, he was
 selected as the Whig nominee in 1848.  After serving in the War of 1812, the
 1832 Black Hawk War and the 1837 Seminole War, Taylor earned the name "Old
 Rough and Ready."  During the Mexican-American War he became a national hero.

    Unfortunately, Taylor was often too strong-willed, impulsive, and
 temperamental.  On July 4, 1850, while attending the ceremony that marked the
 beginning of work on the Washington Monument, he ate too many cold cherries
 and pickled cucumbers while drinking large quantities of iced milk.  Five days
 later Taylor died.  As a result, the war hero didn't accomplish much during
 his 16 months in the White House.

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                         Millard Fillmore (1850 - 1853)

    After Zachary Taylor's death Millard Fillmore assumed the Presidency.
 Fillmore and Taylor had never met before their election in 1848, and as Vice
 President, Fillmore was largely ignored by the Taylor administration.  Unlike
 Taylor, Fillmore favored the Compromise of 1850, which postponed the Civil
 War, while simultaneously dividing the Whig Party.  Fillmore's approval of the
 Fugitive Slave law cost him the support of the northern Whigs.  As a result,
 his policies failed to gain favor with the expansionists and slaveholders, and
 he was denied renomination in 1852.

    Still, three years in the Oval Office was long enough for him to catch
 Potomac Fever--the desire for political power. Although generally progressive
 in his outlook, Fillmore accepted the Presidential nomination of the American,
 or Know-Nothing party in 1856 which adopted an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant
 and anti-slavery platform.  He was also endorsed by the remnants of the Whig
 party.  In the election, Fillmore placed third with 21 percent of the vote.

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                          Franklin Pierce (1853 - 1857)

    After 49 ballots New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce was selected as the
 candidate of the Democratic party in 1852.  With a clever slogan, "We Polked
 you in 1844; we shall Pierce you in 1852!"  the dark-horse Pierce won the
 election, marking the demise of the Whig party, which, thereafter, became
 fatally divided over the slavery issue.

    Pierce had a drinking problem and resigned from the U.S. Senate because of
 it.  During the Mexican-American War, Pierce once fainted and fell off his
 horse.  Later his opponents described him as "a hero of many a well-fought
 bottle."  Two months before his inauguration, Pierce witnessed the train
 accident in which his young son died.  Later his Vice President died before
 reaching Washington, D.C.  To compound his problems even further, Pierce was
 arrested for running down an elderly woman while driving his carriage through
 the streets of Washington.  Unable to prove guilt, the case was closed.

    Politically, Pierce was influenced by proslavery Southerners.  One of his
 best friends was his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis.  After Pierce left the
 Oval Office, the public turned against him to such a degree that it was
 another 50 years before a memorial was built in his honor.

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                          James Buchanan (1857 - 1861)

    According to the polls of experts, James Buchanan ranks as one of the worst
 Presidents and the worst full term administration without a scandal.  He was
 elected in part because of his long political experience.  Buchanan had been
 Secretary of State under James Polk and served more than 20 years in Congress.

    Buchanan was a strict constructionist in regard to Presidential power.
 Although he desired peace, he found no Presidential authority for using force.
 At the same time, he denied the rights of states to secede.  He also accepted
 the proslavery Dred Scott decision as binding, although personally opposed to
 slavery on moral grounds.  Such inconsistencies are often cited as Buchanan's
 major weakness.

    In the end Buchanan simply did not measure up to the demands of the
 Presidency.  Some days he was so depressed he did not leave his private
 chambers at the White House and continued to languish with his indecisiveness,
 and thus isolated himself from surrounding policy makers.

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                          Abraham Lincoln (1861 - 1865)

    In contrast to the failure of the Buchanan administration, the Lincoln
 Presidency was an overwhelming success, at least in the long run.  Polls of
 experts consistently rank Abraham Lincoln as our greatest President.  Yet,
 while in office, he was one of the most persistently criticized chief
 executives in American history.  He did not even expect to be reelected.

      Whereas Buchanan was hopelessly paralyzed by the unfolding of the Civil
 War, Lincoln took decisive action.  Even though a number of the steps he took
 were dubious Constitutionally, he always requested and received Congressional
 approval afterwards. Using extraordinary measures that violated civil
 liberties, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus; supported military arrest
 of some 38,000 Southern sympathizers, as well as the court-martials of other
 civilian antiwar protesters; and spent funds prior to Congressional
 appropriation.

      Lincoln's ability to preserve the Union on the principle of free labor
 was the ultimate basis of his political faith. Although this goal preoccupied
 him, he also signed into law the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Act of
 1862, the latter legislation Buchanan had refused to approve.  The Homestead
 Act was the first federal law to give free land, up to 160 acres, to those who
 settled on it for five years.  This act was responsible for the rapid
 settlement of the Great Plains after the Civil War. The Morrill Act gave
 states public lands which were sold to finance agricultural and mechanical
 arts colleges, so that the children of parents of ordinary means might receive
 a college education.

      As these domestic policies suggest, Lincoln never forgot his background.
 He was a tall, skinny politician with a frontier accent and enormous ambition.
 As often happens in the case of political leaders, he took a long time to
 decide what to do with his life.  However, after sampling politics, he devoted
 the rest of his career to public service or seeking public office despite
 defeats in eight elections.  He genuinely liked people and was concerned about
 their problems.  They helped him to deal with his lifelong bouts with mental
 depression and a series of personal losses.

      With less than one year of formal schooling, he became an autodidact (a
 self-taught person).  Some of his eloquent speeches have become literary
 classics:  the 1858 Illinois Republican convention acceptance speech to run
 for the U.S. Senate popularized the Biblical phrase "A house divided against
 itself cannot stand" in reference to the growing sectional conflict; the 1863
 Gettysburg Address, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people;"
 and the 1865 Second Inaugural Address, "With malice toward none, with charity
 for all."

      Although his assassination turned him into a political martyr and a
 secular saint, the more important lesson of his Presidency is how an
 "ordinary" person with multiple personal problems became extraordinary.  He
 had persistence, a high regard for others, and an unusual understanding of
 America's experiment in self-government.  Lincoln remains our most human and
 greatest President.

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                      Andrew Jackson Johnson (1865 - 1869)

    In many respects, Andrew Johnson was like America's first assassinated
 President, Abraham Lincoln.  They were less than two months apart in age. Both
 were self-taught sons of poor parents from the upper South.  They were
 frontier hicks, highly motivated to achieve recognition, climbed the political
 ladder through hard work, gained recognition as campaigners, used the
 Constitution as the basis for their political beliefs and were unconditional
 Unionists.  So Lincoln dumped his first Vice President from the ticket in 1864
 to make room for the rugged Democrat, Andrew Johnson.

    Yet, their differences soon emerged after Johnson assumed the Presidency.
 He was a dogmatic and domineering hillbilly from East Tennessee who refused to
 grow in office.  His idol was his namesake Andrew Jackson.  Obstinate and
 uncompromising, Johnson lacked the shrewdness and political savvy of Lincoln.
 Johnson, a small slave holder, had the same racial attitudes as other
 Southerners.  He showed leniency toward white Southerners and ex-Confederates
 which the radical Republicans were determined to punish.  The House of
 Representatives impeached him: he was tried by the Senate, and acquitted by
 only one vote on May 26, 1868.

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                       Ulysses Simpson Grant (1869 - 1877)

    Ulysses S. Grant was a war hero but ultimately a political disaster.  His
 administration normally ranks as one of the two worst in American history for
 it was the first to have a huge scandal.  Indeed, it had several financial
 scandals associated with it:  the Credit Mobilier stock scandal; a delinquent
 tax scandal involving the resignation  of the Treasury Secretary; the Whiskey
 Ring scandal involving his personal secretary; and a bribery scandal involving
 the War Secretary.  Although Grant was rigidly incorruptible, his advisers
 during and after his Presidency often misled him.

    Grant was the first President from Ohio (which has produced more Presidents
 than any other state).  He graduated from West Point in 1843.  Eventually,
 Lincoln placed him in command of the Union Armies.  He knew how to win
 military battles, and accepted General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox
 in April 1865. As a war hero, he won two terms in the White House as a
 Republican.  In 1880, he almost won the party's nomination for a third term.

    Unfortunately, a crooked business partner after the Presidency left him
 penniless.  Because writer Mark Twain admired the President, he arranged for
 Grant to get a good deal for his personal memoirs.  However, because he had
 spent a lifetime smoking as many as 20 cigars a day, Grant did his writings
 while ill with cancer and died four days after completing them.

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                     Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1877 - 1881)

    Rutherford B. Hayes was the third Republican President with a beard and the
 second one from Ohio.  He is best known for how he became President.  Hayes
 thought he had lost the election to Samuel J. Tilden, his Democratic opponent
 from Maine.  In fact, Tilden won the popular vote.  However, because a few
 Southern states submitted different sets of electoral votes, the results were
 disputed.  Congress set up an electoral commission that voted along party
 lines giving the election to Hayes by one electoral vote.

    Hayes pacified southern Democrats with the Compromise of 1877 which ended
 the military occupation of the South.  This action effectively restored white
 supremacy to the region.  In office he did little to distinguish his term.
 When Hayes accepted the Republican Presidential nomination in 1876, he pledged
 to serve a single term.  He kept his pledge and retired happily to private
 life.

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                           James Abram Garfield (1881)

    James Garfield was the fourth Republican President with a beard and the
 third from Ohio.  He is best known for serving the second shortest term in the
 Oval Office.  On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot in the back by a mentally
 disturbed office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau.

    Garfield lived for another 80 days after he was shot.  On June 30, 1882,
 Guiteau was hanged before a crowd of over 250 people, some of whom paid as
 much as $300 to watch.

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