Little has been written about the Presidential election of 1812, which is surprising, since it was the nation's first such contest to occur during wartime. President James Madison, walking contradiction politically, had recently asked Congress for a declaration of war against the greatest military nation in the world, and the war wasn't starting ( Read more... )

It seems fitting that this series on Presidential Transition should end with the first transition, and the one that followed the first contested election. By 1796 George Washington had served two terms in office. During the Revolutionary War, Washington served as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the ( Read more... )

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. This is a holiday in which many Presidents have been a part of, from Washington to Biden. In fact even before there was the office of President of the United States, there was Thanksgiving. During the American Revolutionary War the Continental Congress appointed one or more thanksgiving days each year, recommending the ( Read more... )

On November 24, 1784 (240 years ago today), Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, was born in Barboursville, Virginia. Taylor is another somewhat obscure president that I like, mainly for two reasons: (1) because he was unpretentious and (2) when he was elected, the Whigs in Congress thought that he was a weak leader and they ( Read more... )

Millard Fillmore was born and raised in a cabin in upstate New York. His only reading material was said to be a Bible and a hymnal, but despite the paucity of reading material accessible to him as a child, Fillmore grew up with a love of books, an fact often overlooked when consideration is given to the 13th President. When Fillmore became ( Read more... )

The Supreme Court of the United States didn't always have its first sitting on the first Monday in October, and it didn't always sit in Washington, DC at its current location. The Court held its inaugural session on February 2, 1790, and it convened at the Royal Exchange in New York City. But there were no cases on its docket and it had little ( Read more... )

James Monroe served as Secretary of State during the administration of President James Madison for both of Madison's terms. When Madison led the nation into the ill-fated War of 1812, the war went very badly for the Americans at first. When the British burned the U.S. Capitol and the White House on August 24, 1814, Madison removed John Armstrong as ( Read more... )

The story goes that a mixture of bad cherries and milk supposedly caused the death of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850, (174 years ago today). It was on that date that Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, died in Washington, D.C. at the age of 65. He was the second president to die in office (coincidentally, both the first and ( Read more... )

After serving two terms as President, the second running unopposed, James Monroe followed the tradition set by George Washington and opted not to seek a third term, something permissible at the time (but frowned upon.) When his presidency ended on March 4, 1825, Monroe retired to his residence at Monroe Hill, on what is now part of the grounds of ( Read more... )

James Madison left office in March of 1817, following the inauguration of his successor James Monroe. Madison was 65 years old at the time and he retired to his Virginia home called Montpelier, not far from Thomas Jefferson's home of Monticello. As with both Washington and Jefferson, Madison left the presidency a poorer man than when he came in. ( Read more... )