The Accidental President: John Tyler

Everyone seems to know quite a bit about those presidents who served during crisis points in our history: George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson during WWI and FDR who held his hand on the rudder for four terms through the Great Depression and most of WWII. As for all those tweeners, how much does the average person know about Millard Fillmore, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Chester Arthur and the others who filled the gaps? 

This is why it’s enjoyable, informative, fascinating (choose your own descriptor) to read biographies. I’m currently reading a biography of James Polk who began his political career carrying the water for Andrew Jackson. His career coincided with numerous other familiar names of people whose names we recognize even if we’re fuzzy on details, men like Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. 

It was this 1844 incident in Tyler’s presidency that caught my attention. Tyler was among 400 dignitaries and friends invited for a Potomac cruise on the USS Princeton, a new steam frigate. The Princeton had three brand new 12-inch 27,000 pound cannon which the Commander was eager to show off. 

Among those on board was a wealthy New Yorker named John Gardiner along with his two daughters. Tyler had taken a fancy for Gardiner's 20-year-old daughter Julia. The president's wife Priscilla had died from a stroke two years earlier while First Lady, the first person in U.S. history to die in the White House.

Captain Robert Stockton was thrilled to have this opportuity to entertain so many guests on his new gunboat and discharged the big guns would make it an even more memorable occasion. Long story short: when the third cannon was lit it exploded, killing a number of guests including John Gardiner himselr. Julia, hearing the news, passed out. Tyler, in what would surely have become a viral video today, whisked her up in his arms and carried her away to safety. Later the two were wed and she became his second First Lady. (Full account here on the History channel.)

 

John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States and the first to become president without being elected. He assumed office as result of death of a sitting president. William Henry Harrison had become the ninth president in .the 1840 election but died one month after taking office in early 1841. Some say Harrison caught the pneumonia that killed him by speaking for too long in inclement weather during his inaugural address.

What's interesting here is that the Constitution did not actually specify that vice presidents become presidents when a sitting president dies in office. Some believed that the VP becomes acting president or president. Tyler settled the matter by declaring that he was indeed president, which set a precedent until it was formalized with the 25th Amendment after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

EdNote: Harrison must have been a popular figure because in my genealogical line there is a Harrison Newman who was born about that time. (Years later, when U.S. Grant was a national hero, my great-grandfather Grant Newman was born and so named.)

Being the first vice president ever to become president,  Tyler was dubbed the “Accidental President” and opinion was divided on how much power he should assume. When he used the presidential veto to block the creation of a U.S. Central Bank his entire Cabinet resigned (except Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who stayed on for a year to complete the treaty with Britain settling the Maine-Canada border). Tyler immediately assembled a new Cabinet.

Another bit of Tyler trivia: John Tyler holds the record of any U.S. president for the most children fathered (that we know of), 15 in all. Perhaps even more astonishing, as of 2026 (this year) one of Tyler's grandson's is still alive, even though he was born in 1790.

Tyler, a Virginian, was pro-slavery and a strong believer in Manifest Destiny, the concept that it was the mission and duty of the United States to conquer, redeem and re-make the West. In Tyler’s mind westward expansion essentially meant creating more slave states. By the time the Civil War commenced, Tyler had been elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. When Tyler died in January 1862, the Lincoln administration officially ignored his death.

Top of page: Official portrait of President Tyler by George Peter Alexander Healey.

The 1857 Rock Island Bridge Case: Lincoln, River Boats, and the Triumph of Railroads

In the summer of 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton smashed into the Rock Island Bridge, the first railroad bridge to span the Mississippi River, connecting Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa. The collision set the boat ablaze, damaged the bridge, and ignited one of the most consequential lawsuits of the 19th century: Hurd v. Rock Island Railroad Co. (often called the Effie Afton case).

The plaintiff, the steamboat’s owner, argued that the bridge itself was a public nuisance and an illegal obstruction of a navigable waterway. Behind him stood the powerful St. Louis river lobby—steamboat companies, shippers, and merchants—who feared that railroad bridges would choke off the Mississippi’s commercial lifeblood. If one bridge was allowed to stand, dozens more would follow, ending the golden age of river transport.

The Rock Island Railroad hired a relatively unknown 47-year-old Springfield lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, as co-counsel. Lincoln had no formal legal brief on interstate commerce or admiralty law, but he understood something deeper: the railroad was not merely a competitor to the steamboat; it would be its successor.

At trial in Chicago in September 1857, Lincoln dismantled the steamboat interests with plainspoken brilliance. He argued that the Mississippi belonged to the nation, not to any single mode of travel. Rivers had a right to be kept open, but so did the people’s right to cross them. Using maps, models, and a clever demonstration with sticks and string to show wind and current patterns, he proved the Effie Afton had struck the pier because of poor piloting, not the bridge’s design.

More importantly, Lincoln looked forward. In his closing, he declared that “one man’s rights end where another man’s begin,” and that the same public necessity that once justified steamboats now demanded railroads. Bridges were not obstructions; they were the next chapter of American progress.

The jury deadlocked, which legally upheld the bridge. Within months, railroad bridges sprouted across the Mississippi. The steamboat era began its long decline, and the transcontinental railroad network became inevitable. Lincoln’s fee was $500, modest by any standard, but the case cemented his reputation as a lawyer who could see the future. Two years later, when he ran for president, the phrase “a railroad lawyer from Illinois” was meant as a slur by river-state Democrats. History rendered a different verdict: in defending that single bridge, Lincoln helped bind a continent together.

I bring up this story because it seems emblematic of many conflicts throughout our history. Horse and buggy enterprises ultimately yielded to the automobile. Ice harvesters were eliminated with the advent of refrigerators. Typesetters were no longer needed with the advent of desktop publishing. The internet has crippled newspapers. Streaming media has wounded the theater industry.

Can we hold back the future? Should we? Across the country today there is opposition to data centers, even though every single organized group fighting to stop them uses the services that data centers provide. 

What is needed is a real collaboration between the adversaries of data centers and the advocates. Must there always be winners and losers? Is there no possibility of a universal win-win-win for all parties?

Sources:

Lincoln & the Rock Island Bridge Case

Hurd vs. Rock Island Railroad Company

Lincoln's Greatest Case (Tennessee Bar Assn.)

Abraham Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge

Collision of Interests

Thinking about Power, Plus 14 Thought-Provoking Quotes

"Ecce Homo"--Cigoli. Who's got the power?

Power shapes human history, relationships, and societies. It can inspire progress or breed corruption. At its best, power enables leadership, justice, and protection; at its worst, it produces arrogance, abuse, and tyranny. Thinkers from Plato to Martin Luther King Jr. have reflected on its nature, warning of its dangers while pointing to its potential for good. 

On a personal level, however, our sense of freedom is narrower than it seems. Beyond genetics and habits, we are bound by inner forces we rarely notice. Cognitive biases shape our thinking, emotions override reason, and early conditioning imprints patterns we struggle to escape. Addictions and cravings further erode self-control, while culture and language limit what we can imagine. Biology—through hunger, fatigue, or aging—also restrains us, as does our tendency toward self-deception. "The heart is deceitful above all things." (Jeremiah 17:9) These internal boundaries remind us that freedom is not absolute, but rather a continual negotiation with forces within ourselves, both conscious and unconscious.

The following quotes explore the complexity of power—how it is gained, tested, misused, and restrained—and why understanding it remains essential for anyone who seeks to influence others or navigate a world built upon it.

14 Quotes on Power

1. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
   — Lord Acton
2. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
   — Abraham Lincoln
3. “Knowledge itself is power.”
   — Francis Bacon
4. “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
   — Thomas Jefferson (attributed)
5. “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
   — Plato
6. “Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”
   — Honoré de Balzac
7. “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
   — Mahatma Gandhi
8. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
   — Martin Luther King Jr.
9. “Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
   — Margaret Thatcher
10. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
    — Sun Tzu
11. “The object of power is power.”
    — George Orwell, 1984*
12. “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”
    — Stan Lee (Spider-Man comics, 1962)
13. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
    — Alice Walker
14. “Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.”
    — George Bernard Shaw

Related Link

Yesterday's blog post about the benefits and dangers of police power.

By the Waters of Babylon...

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. 
--Psalm 137:1-2

Human history has been intertwined with water. Until the past 200 years waterways have been the chief highways for travel. For this reason, all the world's major cities were located on rivers or lakes. Paris, London, Cairo, Moscow, Rome, New York, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Delhi. Even those adjacent to oceans were established at the mouths of freshwater rivers and bays.

Railroads changed this. 

As a young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln became involved in a legal dispute involving a railroad bridge being built over a river. If the bridge were built, it would block the riverboats traveling on that liquid waterway. After much study, Lincoln saw that railroads were the future. Years later, he became an advocate for the Transcontinental Railroad project that opened up the West, signing into law the Pacific Railway Act of 1862.

Railroads enabled the construction of major cities in all manner of locales. Rivers were no longer needed for the mass transport of good. 

Las Vegas, founded in 1905 along the railroad line that ran from L.A. to Salt Lake City, is perhaps the most famous such city of our time. There were natural springs in the vicinity, water was scarce in the desert there. The lack of power and water to support the scale to which it has grown now was unimaginable then. 

The first significant growth of Las Vegas came with the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, which brought an influx of workers. In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling, which laid the foundation for "Sin City" to become a major gambling hub. The opening of the El Rancho Vegas in 1941 marked the beginning of the Strip, the city’s famous boulevard lined with casinos and resorts.

I first visited the city in the early 90s when the population had just exceeded a million. Complaints about road congestion were in the news. This didn't stop people from coming. They came from all over the world. Today there is a larger concern as the city surpasses three million inhabitants and struggles with its water and energy needs.

The past few years Las Vegas had been dealing with water shortages due to low water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are fed by the Colorado River. In 2021, the Secretary of the Interior declared a shortage on the Colorado River, which reduced the amount of water available to Nevada and other users in 2022. In 2022, the lakes reached record lows, and the federal government warned that some states, including Nevada, might need to make significant cutbacks.

This past year when the rains came the lakes began filling up again, but the drought did reveal the region's vulnerability. Currently, the city (and surroundings) uses 400,000 acre-feet of water, 90% of it from the Colorado River.

Las Vegas, like many cities, has continuously adapted to its environment, finding ways to grow and thrive against the odds. The fluctuating levels of Lake Mead serve as a metaphor for the city's—and humanity's—resilience and adaptability. As we face an uncertain future, Las Vegas reminds us of our ability to innovate and adapt, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. Our history with water may be complex, but it is also a story of survival, resourcefulness, and hope.

Songs, Stories and Trivia About Rivers

Rivers

The Longest Rivers in the United States

Watching the River Flow

Old Man River

Of Time and the River

A Holiday for Presidents with a Handful of Quotes from Our First

When I was a kid we celebrated both Abe Lincoln's and George Washington's birthdays. For convenience the two were merged into a Federal holiday called President's Day.  The Washington illustration was created as part of my Mapped Life Series in which I painted faces on pages of a Rand McNally Atlas. Pennsylvania is where our Founding Fathers met to hammer out the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, one of the defining documents of our American experiment.

* * * 

Here are some George Washington quotes to ponder and enjoy on this day.

* * * 

"Example, whether it be good or bad, has a powerful influence."

* * * 

"We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a Nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it."

* * * 

"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery."
--Letter to Robert Morris

* * * 

"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."
--Letter to James Madison

* * * 

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

* * *

"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."
--Letter to his niece

* * * 

"Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter; whether in public or private walks of life."

* * * 

"It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones."
--Letter to James McHenry

Flashback Friday: Symbols, Symbolism and My Lincoln Portraits

Blue Lincoln with Sunblock on His Nose

In art history Symbolism was an actual movement in which pictorial means were used to convey allegorical meanings. Throughout history, however, artists have used symbols and symbolism, especially in religious iconography.

 

To illustrate the difference between symbolism and representational art, picture a cave drawing of several buffalo images with a dotted line crossing a bunch of wavy lines. This representational piece is telling people where the buffalo are and how to get there. (They are across the river.) If one of the buffalo has wings and is flying above the herd, it might be some kind of early symbolic expression. ("The gods granted me an opportunity to take one.") If there is a large tripod-like creature lifting one of the buffalo and a screeching noise being emitted with a beam of light coming out disintegrating the other buffaloes, then you are looking at an early version of War of the Worlds. Later historians would then endlessly debate whether this was Realism or Fantasy.

All this to say that symbolism is as much a part of art as metaphors are to poetry. For example, in David Bowie's "Is There Life On Mars?" the line, "look at those cave men go" is not referring to cave men but to lowbrow brutes having it out in a bar fight, or possibly the alienated teenager is watching a movie of such. The words are not literal but rather metaphorical, as is Em Dickinson's line, "Hope is the thing with feathers" which Woody Allen turns around to indicate his own -- and modern man's -- existential alienation and despair with the title of his volume Without Feathers. Or he may mean he is exposing himself.

O.K., so this was a long intro to make a small point about my Lincoln paintings. My first painting, Blue Lincoln, was not really about Lincoln at all. I had read a quote somewhere that "you can't fight an international war and a civil war at the same time" and it resonated with me. I believe it was from the book Maximilian and Carlotta in which the U.S. could not defend Mexico against European incursion (a violation of the Monroe Doctrine) because it was in the throes of its own civil war. 

For me this was a perfect symbol of many lives today who are battling their own inner conflicts and have unresolved issues internally while simultaneously trying to carry on with their life purpose of service to the community, a cause or the world-at-large. Many people have been sidelined by internal conflicts who could be leaders of organizations in need of leadership.

The Lincoln image thus became such a symbol for me. The overarching internal conflict between good and evil, freedom and slavery, left the president blue.

The painting Lincoln II has a brighter background, but his features are ashen. The subtitle, Portrait with One Dying Eye, is a reference to the line from Dylan's "Hurricane." The wounded guy "looks up through his one dyin' eye, says 'What'd you bring him in here for? He ain't the guy.'" The song is ultimately about injustice, as noted in the second to last verse. "To see him obviously framed couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game."

And so it is that presidents themselves become symbols. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was not delivered in Arlington Cemetery, land that formerly belonged to Robert E. Lee, but rather at the Lincoln Memorial. Symbols have power. Symbols resonate.

* * *

When I wrote all this 10 or more years ago I had an end in mind. Thursday evening there were more than a dozen art gallery openings slated and an all day gallery hop on Saturday. I wanted to encourage readers to take to the streets and see a bit of all this creative energy emerging here in the Twin Ports. 

At the time I wrote, "As you engage the arts, whether the visual arts, music, poetry or theater, it can be a rewarding exercise to engage the work in a deeper way. Look for threads that lead deeper into the mind of the artist or beyond to the culture-at-large."  

Of course some art is simply what it is. It's not always symbolic. Sometimes a sitar is simply a sitar. My work (no Lincolns, but several Dylans) was on display at Goin' Postal in Superior, along with perhaps a dozen other artists. Goin' Postal on Tower Avenue is still my "home gallery" to this day. 

Flashback Friday: Presidents Day Trivia Contest

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

This Trivia Quiz was created in 2012, 

but should be just as much fun today.

With this coming Monday being Presidents Day, this is as good a day as any to think about presidents. By presidents we're talking about U.S. presidents here. Sorry, I mean no offense to my readers in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Zambia or Laos who were not required to memorize U.S. president-trivia in their schools while growing up. For the rest of you, here's a quiz to help keep your brain cells from atrophying. You can check your answers against my guesses at the end of this quiz. Be sure to keep score.

 
Disclaimer: This quiz is for entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as having any usefulness for passing your U.S. citizenship exam. 

 

1. Which president was nicknamed His Accidency? 

a. Harrold Wilson 

b. John Tyler 

c. Chester Arthur 

d. Grover Cleveland Alexander 

2. Which President was called The Do-Nothing President? 

a. Pat Buchanan 

b. William Buckley 

c. William Howard Taft 

d. James Buchanan 

3. Which president was sometimes called The Big Lub? 

a. Grover Lightfoot 

b. William Howard Taft 

c. Teddy Roosevelt 

d. Herbert Hoover 

 

4. Who was the only president with a Ph.D.? 

a. Charles Smedley 

b. Woodrow Wilson 

c. Calvin Coolidge 

d. Benjamin Harrison 

 

5. Who was the first president to actually dine with a black man in the White House? 

a. Abraham Lincoln 

b. Ulysses S. Grant 

c. Teddy Roosevelt 

d. John F. Kennedy 

 

6. Teddy Roosevelt was evidently into pets. Match the the following pets to their names. 

a. Guinea Pig 

b. Snake 

c. Bull Dog 

d. Chesapeake Retriever 

Their names were: Pete, Father O'Grady, Emily Spinach, and Sailor Boy... but in which order? 

7. Who was the first president's wife to be called the First Lady of the Land? 

a. Letitia Tyler 

b. Lucy Hayes 

c. Eliza Johnson 

d. Frances Clara Cleveland 

 

8. Who was the first president to fly in a helicopter? 

a. Silent Cal 

b. FDR 

c. Ike 

d. Harry S. Truman 

 

9. Who was the first president to fly in an airplane? 

a. Herbert Hoover 

b. Teddy Roosevelt 

c. FDR 

d. Calvin College 

10. This president raised 11 children, none of whom were his own. (He is one of three presidents to have had adopted children.) 

a. Chester Arthur 

b. Andrew Johnson 

c. Andrew Jackson 

d. James Polk 

 

11. When he was vice president, he presided over the Senate wearing a pair of pistols, as a precaution against the frequent outbursts of violence. (See? Contentiousness in the congress is nothing new.) 

a. Hebert Hoover 

b. Andrew Johnson 

c. Martin Van Buren 

d. Lyndon Johnson 

 

12. Which president was the first to see a baseball game and saw the Cincinnati Reds beat the Washington Senators 7-4? 

a. Benjamin Harrison 

b. Teddy Roosevelt 

c. William McKinley 

d. Woodrow Wilson
 
13. How many presidents did not win the popular vote yet won the election? 

a. 5 

b. 8 

c. 15 

d. 11 

 
14. How many Americans understand how the Electoral College works?
a. 5
b. 8
c. 15
d. 11 

 
15. Who was the first president not born on the continental United States?
a. George Washington
b. John D. Rockefeller
c. Andrew Johnson
d. Barack Obama
 
Bonus: Which website did I borrow all this information from?
a. ClassroomHelp.com 
b. NationalGeographic.com
c. Infoplease.com
d. None of the above. I took good notes in school and remembered all this stuff. 

ANSWERS
1. (b) 2. (d) 3. (b) 4. (b) 5. (c) TR dined with Booker T. Washington. 6. Some of the pets TR had in the White House for his family included a Bull Dog named Pete, a Guinea Pig named Father O'Grady, a snake named Emily Spinach and a Chesapeake Retriever named Sailor Boy. 7. I think it was Lucy. 8. (c) 9. There is a dispute here as my sources conflict. One source says it was Teddy, the other says FDR. 10. (c) Yes, Jackson had 11 adopted children. 11. (c) 12. (a) 13. (c) 14. Trick question. Nobody knows how it works. 15. (d) He was born in Sasketchewan. No, wait, Rio. Actually it was Hawaii, which was not a state until I was in elementary school. Bonus Question: a, b and c. Score five points for having read this all the way through, and one point for each correct answer. If you did better than 18, you're pretty sharp. Take a bow.

Memory Games: How Well Do You Know Your Presidents? (Part I)

Purple martin. (Public domain)

I have a problem with names. Unfortunately, as I get older it seems to be getting worse. When my mind reaches for a name, it often seems to find a hole there. It's like the brain is a pantry with shelves of products, but when you look for the one you need, it seems to have been moved. At that point, I don't know where to even look.

Anyways, there are techniques one can use to improve your memory. What I plan to share here is an easy way to remember the first 20 U.S. presidents. You should be able to accomplish this in a relatively short time, especially since you probably already know the first few.

One way people remember lists of things is to use mnemonic devices. A mnemonic device is a technique that enables you to more easily retrieve information. One such device is to assign images to correlate to the numbers in a list. Then, as you recall each image you pair it with the thing you want to remember. Here are the first ten images in my mnemonic list: 1 is a gun, 2 is a shoe, 3 is a tree, 4 is a door, 5 is a hive, 6 is for sticks, 7 is heaven, 8 is a gate, 9 is a vine and 10 is a hen. If memorize this, reciting the first ten presidents is a snap. 

1. Picture a gun shooting one dollar bills. George Washington is the president on the one dollar bill, though this is easy because everyone knows he was first anyways. Nevertheless, if you did not know that, the one dollar bill is a clue.

2. Picture a shoe being studied under a microscope by a scientist. The microscope is so powerful it can actually see the atoms in the leather. John Adams is the second president.

3. The tree you picture here is decorated with ornaments which are all in the shape of Monticello. Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's home near Charlottesville, Virginia. If you prefer another image, maybe you can picture a Chef serving a plate with a tree growing on it. Chef-erson.

4. Four is a door, and for this image I have stapled Mad magazines all over the door. James Madison was our fourth prez.

5. For this one, I picture two men in suits rowing a boat with a beehive in the back of the boat. They are trying to get away from it as fast as they can. The one man is shouting, "Row, mon, row!" James Monroe was our fifth president.

6. For this one, I envision a wreath made of sticks floating in the air. There are sticks intersecting the wreath on the lower right, forming the letter Q. The Q reminds me that John Quincy Adams was our. sixth president.

7. Up on a cloud we see the Pearly Gates. (Seven is Heaven.) In front of these there are a couple children playing jacks. Andrew Jackson was our 7th commander-in-chief.

8. Now we come to a gate. Sitting on the gate is a purple bird. The purple bird is a purple martin. Our 8th president is Martin Van Buren. 

9. For this one I picture a hairy vine. You can make it a giant Jack-in-the-beanstalk vine if you want, but it is really hairy, which is the operative clue for William Henry Harrison. If want to picture the vine growing fast, then wilting, it will be a reminder that President Harrison died one month after taking office, the shortest term of any U.S. president.

10. Ten is a hen, a giant hen wearing a tie. I envision a necktie, but you can put a polkadot bowtie on this hen if you wish. The tie stands for John Tyler. 

Now, I'm going to switch to a different kind of mnemonic device, once again using unusual or absurd images but in a different manner. For presidents 11 thru 20 I will picture a humorous sequence of images as if in a movie. The movie begins with Tyler, the giant hen wearing a tie. 

John Tyler

The giant hen (wearing a tie) is poking a tailor with a stick, while the tailor is busy sewing a button onto a dapper pinstripe suit worn by another man. The tailor puts down his needle and thread to take a trowel and begins filling this other man's pockets with dirt while that fellow is shouting "More!"

Suddenly an arrow pierces this man's thigh and we see that it has been fired from a cannon.

This little visual sequence covers the next five presidents: Polk (11), Taylor (12), Fillmore (13), Pierce (14) and Buchanan (15).

Since we all know Lincoln was 16, no need for a tool to remember that, but we will use Lincoln as a starting point for the next set. 

Picture Lincoln sitting by a fire pit cooking Johnson brats over an open fire with his left hand while signing a document  with his right that says Land Grant at the top. There's a smoky haze wafting around Lincoln's face which we think is from the fire pit, but as the camera pans we see it is actually from a giant cigar lying in the field behind him.

That's it. If you visualize this scene you will recognize Lincoln (16), Johnson (17), Grant (18), Hayes (19) and Garfield (20).

* * *

OK. Test yourself. Have you nailed it? Here's the full list if you want to make your own humorous mnemonic images to memorize the rest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

* * * 

Another Explanation as to Why the Founding Fathers Didn't Deal with the Slavery Issue

Many of us, if not most, have spent a lifetime cobbling together personal views on various issues from personal to global. Personal examples include: what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to spend my time this coming weekend? How am I going to come up with money to fix the car or get a new one? 

Then there are the wider issues. What should we be doing about illegal immigration? How much money should our government spend on space exploration? 

On most issues, most of us probably have an answer in our heads that satisfies us for the moment, or at least until the notion is seriously challenged, because most matters have pro and con arguments to support or oppose them. Is Democracy the best kind of government? Until a few summers ago this was a settled question for me. I am less sure than I used to be.

Was Abraham Lincoln our greatest president? Has the American Experiment run its course? Does the Bible teach that people should submit to the governing authorities or is the State the enemy?

I share the above by way of introduction to a new thought. Why didn't the Founding Fathers do a better job of dealing with the problem of slavery?

How would you answer that? Do you have some kind of pat answer that you've accepted as the reason slavery was permitted to continue alongside the pronouncement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal"?

Somehow, the answer that I'd accepted some time back was that the most important issue in breaking free from England was to have a unified opposition amongst the Colonies. That is, I believed the Northern colonial territories were willing to put off the slavery question till a later date in order to address the pressing issue of the moment: Breaking from from England.

A NEW EXPLANATION

Ben Franklin

I'm currently reading a book called American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic, by Joseph J. Ellis. The subtitle pretty much spells out the author's intent here. Our history has been remarkable as regards its growth from backwoods colonialists to world power by just over 150 years, and dominant power by 200.

On the other hand, our track record with regard to this continent's native peoples, and with regard to the slavery issue, has been shamefully dreadful. (I think here, for example, of the black servicemen who defended our country in World War II, putting their lives on the line for freedom only to return to a Jim Crow South where they couldn't drink from "white" water fountains and had to sit in the back of the bus.)

How was England able to eliminate, without a Civil War, the institution of slavery in 1807? This seems remarkable to me. What took us so long?

Here's what Ellis explained. Keep in mind that a primary motivation for the Founding Fathers to break off from England was the odious experience of Centralized Power. As a result, when they wrote the Constitution, a primary aim was to restrict the powers of the Executive branch of government. 

Having thus set up a system where states had power to self-govern to the largest extent possible, it became increasingly problematic for the the Federal legislators and presidents to change the rules by which they governed. 

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was noble, but did not have any teeth. If anything the Civil War's major achievement, apart from ending slavery, was to strengthen Federal power and transform the country into a single nation as opposed to being a collection of independent states.

Even so, the foundation of state independence still remains, as we've notably seen in the past year as governors respond in a variety of ways to the disruption of Covid-19.

Our past 100 years has seen a level of Federal consolidation unlike anything anticipated by the Founders. I'd be curious how they would have felt about the increasing quantity of legislation set in motion by Executive Orders in the last 20 years. 

All that aside, I look forward to reading Joseph Ellis' interpretation of this significant saga, the founding of our Republic.

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Election 2020: A Rude Awakening is Coming. Will It Be for Trump's or Biden’s Supporters?

Yesterday my Medium feed (recommended articles) included a story titled A Rude Awakening is Coming for Trump and His Supporters.  Now generally I do not have time to read everything that gets sent to me in this fashion. Nevertheless, some things do catch my eye. The article essentially outlined all the reasons this author believes a Biden/Harris landslide is coming. More interesting to me, however, was reading the comments that followed. 

The 5 minute read explains why Trump and his zealous followers will soon be facing the biggest disillusionment of their lives. 

After reading half the comments, I thought it might be fun to play off the title of Frank Lucacovic's essay because the confidence on both sides seems to be so strong that it will indeed be a rude awakening for one team or the other when this thing is over.

Here are some of the comments, extracted from over 130 attached to the original piece. You can read the whole article here first if you prefer, or start with these excerpts. Or skip these excerpts and read the growing river of responses there if you like.

What's interesting to me is hearing people on both sides talk about this election as if it won't even be close. That may be the biggest surprise for some. My own personal fear is that whoever wins, the results will be disputed.

13 SELECT COMMENTS

1.

I appreciate your confidence but you may have overlooked two key factors. Many Trump supporters are either shy in their political opinions, or outright lie to pollsters for fun. This factor will decide many of the swing states that Democrats think are in the bag.

2.

Your wishful thinking lost me in sentence two - which contains two parts pure opinion and one fact.

For the coming Biden landslide you describe to be true, we'd be on the verge of a 1984-style Reagan win. Not even close - Reagan had momentum, near hysteria - he could draw 10k to small towns in blue states. Biden can't draw his entire family to an event.

Like recent past, this will be a tight election decided by one or two states.

The early voting numbers seem to be muxh stronger with Republicans than Democrats, so I think you may be surprised there.

Proclaiming victory 2 weeks before the election is just not smart. But, please, go ahead.

3.

As a mere observer from the other side of the pond, I find this piece and the comments on it a bit depressing - because so predictable and emotive. A word like 'evil' should be weighed very carefully and to dismiss all your President's followers as 'ignorant and selfish' shows a huge contempt for those who think and feel otherwise. And no, I'm not a Trump fan!

4.

Much as I dislike Trump and all he stands for, right now, after Giuliani's latest revelations regarding the contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive, I wouldn't put a cent on Biden winning. Neither he nor his family deserve to be near the White House any more than the Trumps do. US politics is one giant swamp.

5.

Biden is corrupt, senile and a patsy for the elites who lost control when Trump came in and messed up their swamp.

The biden family along with many politicians on both sides are deeply fincanced by foreign interests and I don't think americans want to go back on the plantation.

There is no energy in Biden or the so-called democratic platform that is consistently veering further left and offering nothing but hate and fearmongering.

Remember what the talking points were in 16? WW3 is coming and NATO will fall apart, bla. bla.. and now NATO is stronger than ever, North Korea and Islamic State are pacified. There are peace deals being made with Israel and Arab nations. China has lost its grip. US is energy independent. Pedofile rings and human trafficking being unraveled like never before.

The screeching leftists have the microphone and are supported by mainstream media and big corrupt money. But they don't stand a chance against the calm and thoughtfull people who still are the majority and will decide the vote.

6.

I wonder if this was written before or after the bombshell news about Hunter Biden's laptop and the implications of corruption it portrays for Joe Biden.

7.

Trump is going to win ... in a landslide. The Biden-Harris ticket is the weakest in the history of presidential elections. See you in two weeks.

8.

Frank I pray you are correct but I fear you are placing too much faith in polling numbers. Almost all political polling in the past 50 years has leaned heavily on telephone polling. We have reached a time where the overwhelming number of households no longer own a home phone and even among those with a home phone it is there for emergencies and rarely if ever gets answered for fear of telemarketers. A good number of those who just use cell phones also don't answer if they don't know who it is or they will let it go to voice mail and return the call if it is someone they actually do know. Additionally, one of the strongest parts of Trump's base is white males without a college degree. From the research I have done, it is a demographic almost impossible to quantify in polling data and they will come out heavily for Trump.

9.

This article, and others in mainstream media, is truly remarkable. EVERYTHING TRUMP DOES IS WRONG AND EVERYTHING BIDEN DOES IN RIGHT!! Remarkable indeed. Biden does not even have to campaign and he will win. In other words, the media elites who graduated from Ivy league schools and other universities are so much smarter than the average American, they will effectively pick the president for the people and tell them which box to tick. The strategy? Constantly report negative news on the guy they don't like, suppress and hide the bad news about the guy they like. Do this constantly, day in day out for 3-years, and then say the voters chose. By the way, any voter of public figure who strays from that narrative should be cancelled. That is the cesspool of pathology that palms itself of for American journalism as they lecture China and Russia about freedom of the press and propaganda. I haven't even dealt with the world's number one propaganda and indoctrination machine-Hollywood.

10.

You realize Clinton was up more vs Biden in swing states last election and Trump won. You also realize nbc and wsj polls in 2016 also had clinton at +11 in same first half of October time period. Common sense says just look at turn out and parades for Trump.

11.

It’s stunning how many people still feel that the spoiled man-child currently sitting in the Oval Office is acceptable to be the leader of this nation. Really? He’s an incompetent embarrassment, a narcissist and a liar. Only the wealthy seeking tax breaks and those who would aspire to be like him will vote for him. It’s frightening to think anyone admires him enough to see him continue his plunder of this country. They have truly set their bar very low. The dumbing down of America & celebrity worship is directly responsible for this debacle.

12.

Sure Biden is going to win, you can see the support in his rallies.

Also, he thinks he's running for senate:

“that’s why I’m running as a Democrat for the Senate” (min 25:20).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kouqhEQCjoI

13.

I've spent time reading articles from both sides. What I've noticed is that both sides are anticipating a landslide victory. Both sides believe that if they do lose the election, it will be because of fraud and corruption.

Emotions are running sky high on both sides and both sides believe the other side to be morally flawed at best, and an enemy to be defeated and cast aside at worst.

What should be very concerning to us as the American people is that we are being set up to be even more divided after the election than before - regardless of the outcome.

To quote Abraham Lincoln who quoted Jesus, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

As we allow ourselves to become more divided, the house begins to collapse from the inside out.

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