Radio Script #1304

Little Talks on Common Things
March 7, 1982

Recently on this program I have told anecdotes about our two greatest presidents, Washington and Lincoln. Today I want to add stories about others among our 39 presidents. I am well aware that Ronald Reagan is called the 40th president, but actually he is only the 39th different person to hold that office. Grover Cleveland is counted twice because his two terms were not consecutive.

As President, George Washington was followed by a stiff New England Puritan, John Adams, who was the first occupant of the White House and whose wife Abigail is said to have hung her washing in the East Room. A scurrilous story about Adams, probably told because he was such a Puritan moralist, was that when he sent Charles Pickney to Paris as the U. S. Ambassador to France, he told Pickney to procure four of the prettiest French girls he could find as mistresses, two for Adams and two for himself. When Adams heard the story, he said: “If that is true, Pickney has cheated me. I have never seen the girls; he has kept all four for himself.”

Adams was followed in the presidency by the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. Before becoming President, he had been sent to France as Pres. Washington’s ambassador, where he had been preceded by the very popular Benjamin Franklin. The French foreign minister greeted Jefferson by saying, “You have come to replace Mon. Franklin.” Jefferson replied: “No, I have come to succeed him; no man can replace him.”

One day, while riding with his grandson, Jefferson met a Negro slave who removed his hat and bowed. Jefferson lifted his own hat and bowed in return, while the grandson remained a106f and silent. Then Jefferson said to him, “Do you permit a slave to be more a gentleman than you are?”

An ardent Federalist was a guest at a Virginia plantation. When told that Jefferson had recently been there, the man said to his host, “What new heresy did Jefferson thrust upon you?” The host replied, “You do Mr. Jefferson gross injustice; he is a very great man. I have seen him lift up with his own arms a fallen slave.” “Bah” said the guest, “God made Negroes different. Not content with turning the world upside down, Jefferson is now quarrelling with God himself.”

When Jefferson’s successor, James Madison, long after his own presidency, became the oldest survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he said: “I must be careful lest I be thought to have outlived myself.” During his presidency, a visitor once found Madison in bed. “Don’t get up,” said the visitor, “and don’t try to talk lying down. Just get your rest.” Madison replied: “I always talk best when I’m lying.”

An office seeker asked Madison for the governorship of a western territory. “It’s already taken,” said the President. “What about collector of a port?” “No vacancy.” “How about a Post Office?” “None open.” After a few minutes of silence the man asked, “Do you have any old clothes you can spare?”

Madison was succeeded by James Monroe. At a White House reception, a solicitous aide asked Monroe if he wasn’t exhausted from shaking hands all afternoon. Monroe replied, “No, a little flattery will support a man through a lot of fatigue.”

President John Quincy Adams had a rigid rule about accepting gifts. When the Veterans of the Revolution presented him with a gold-headed cane, he had his own name removed from it, and placed it in the Library of Congress inscribed: “to the People of the United States.”

John Qunicy Adams was an early riser. Consequently, late in the day he became sleepy. Once, attending a Harvard Law School lecture by the noted jurist, Chief Justice Story, Adams began to nod with closed eyes. Story said to the students: “Gentlemen, you have before you the evil effects of early rising.”

Andrew Jackson, the first president of humble origin, liked to tell something he had learned from his mother. “One day when I was about four years old, Mother saw me crying. “Stop that,” she said, “only girls cry.” I asked her what boys did. “Boys fight,” she said, “Ever since that day I’ve spent my life fighting.”

As a lawyer, Jackson persistently quoted from Mathew Bacon’s Abridgement of the Law. When an opposing attorney chided him about it, the tempery Jackson challenged the man to a duel. By the time the two met for that test of honor, their seconds had patched things up and both men fired into the air, then shook hands. Then the other lawyer handed Jackson a package, saying, “I feared you would be inconsolable without your beloved Bacon.” In the package Jackson found a hunk of smoked fat pork.

Jackson was given to what were called Irish bulls, that is the utterance of ludicrous malaprops of language. At the Battle of New Orleans he shouted, “Boys, elevate them guns a little lower.”

Quite different from Jackson was the man whom Old Hickory picked to succeed him, the New York landed patroon of Dutch descent, Martin Van Buren. He was no match for Jackson in popularity, and at his inauguration, it was the outgoing president who got most attention. An observer said, “For once we saw the rising sun eclipsed by the setting sun.”

Once when Van Buren’s leading opponent, Henry Clay was at the White House, the kitchen caught fire. Clay said to Van Buren, “I’m doing all I can to get you out of this house, but, really, I’m not trying to burn you out.”

Willian Henry Harrison, member of a wealthy Virginia family, was presented by his party as a poor boy born in a log cabin. For his leadership of a Company in an Indiana fight with Indians, he was called “Old Tippecanoe”. When he became President, his predecessor, Van Buren, said: “Old Tippecanoe is as proud of being President as a woman with a new bonnet.”

When a White House servant made a visiting farmer wait in a lobby, Harrison protested. “But,” said the servant, “those cowhide boots would have soiled the carpet.” “Never mind the carpet,” said Harrison, “this house and all the carpets in it belong to folks like him – the people.”

When Harrison died, he was succeeded by his Vice President, John Tyler, who was not only the homeliest man ever placed in the office, but was also the father of 14 children. So unpopular was he that, when he rode in the parade at the dedication of Bunker Hill monument, spectators turned their backs on him. Once Tyler sent his oldest son to the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to engage a special train. The railroad official said, “I don’t run special trains for President Tyler. “But” said the son, “you ran a special train for the funeral of President Harrison”. “Yes indeed,” said the superintendent, “and if you will bring me
President Tyler in the same condition, I’ll let you have the best train on the road.”

President James K. Polk had a hatred of paper money, and wherever he went he carried a supply of gold and silver coins. On one of his travels, accompanied by his wife, he ran out of pocket money. He said to her: “Open the trunk and get me some money.” “I’ll do it this once more,” she replied, “but if you insist on paying all your bills with coins, I’m going to get you a wheelbarrow.”

President Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War, was fond of hominy, but he wanted it fresh and sweet. He watched his favorite horse nuzzle among bags of corn, then gnaw into one of them. Taylor said to a servant, “There’s a bag that’s been torn. Take a quart out of it and make me some grits.”

Vice President Millard Fillmore, succeeding to the presidency on Taylor’s death, was called the Accidental President from New York. In a dispute with a barber, Fillmore offered to settle the argument by tossing a coin and took one out of his pocket. “Wait a minute,” said the barber, “I want to see if that coin has two heads.”

The only President who ever came from New Hampshire, Franklin Pierce, asked what he would do when he left the presidency, replied, “After that high office, what can any man do but get drunk?”

James Buchanan, the President who immediately preceded Lincoln, ordered all his ambassadors to appear at foreign courts in simple American dress, with no ribbons, jewels or gold lace. The American ambassador in London was told that he should follow age-old British custom and appear in fancy dress. Buchanan called in the British ambassador in Washingron and told him that the first and best loved of all presidents, George Washington, had always appeared in an ordinary coat whose only decorations were gold buttons in the form of an American eagle. “My ambassador to the Court of St. James,” said Buchanan, “is going to wear plain clothes, but I’ll let him carry a dress sword.” and that is just what the ambassador did when he was presented to Queen Victoria.

Buchanan liked whisky. His favorite brand was made by Jim-Beam’s brewery. Many a guest at the White House thought the initials J.B. on those bottles stood for James Buchanan.

Lincoln’s successor was a tailor. Even after he went to Washington as a Congressman, he mended his own clothes. When asked if he did not think that undignified, he answered: “No indeed. Adam was the first tailor. He made aprons out of fig leaves.”

Returning to Tennessee after his term as President, Andrew Johnson said in a speech: “I hope to mend the breaches between North and South caused by the bitter war.” Hearing the speech, a woman said: “Praise the Lord. Mr. Johnson is going to. open his tailor shop again and mend breeches.”

Next week we will have stories about other Presidents.

Year: 1982