On this Presidents Day, we pause to think of Missouri’s Presidents. There are two, only one of whom is a native. And there might be a third.
And then there are a lot of folks who once entertained thoughts of high political grandeur but who fell by the wayside. We spent some time back in a Missourinet studio last week talking for today’s edition of “Showme Today” about our presidents and some of our presidential wannabes.
In the old railroad depot in Atchison, Kansas is the smallest presidential library in the country. It’s considered an unofficial one because of the peculiar circumstances of David Rice Atchison’s perhaps-presidency. His grave stone in Plattsburg tells a story:
Missouri’s northwesternmost county is named for him, way up in the corner. For years, Missouri and Nebraska feuded over 5,000 acres known as McKissick’s Island that was left on the Missouri side of the river after a flood in 1867 changed the river channel. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1904 that McKissick Island was still Nebraska territory. It took 95 more years for the two states to agree on an interstate compact approved by Congress that created the legal boundary. But the only way Nebraskans can get to it is by driving through part of Iowa and into Atchison County, Missouri.
Atchison, Kansas is 24 miles southwest of St. Joseph. David Rice Atchison was from Liberty but in the days of “Bleeding Kansas” when the state was deciding if it would be slave or free, Atchison led one of the groups of “border ruffians” who went to Kansas and voted to elect a pro-slavery legislature.
He served two terms in the U. S. Senate. He was so popular that he was elected president pro tempore thirteen times. In those days, the vice-president presided over the Senate and the pro tem was elected and presided only on those rare times when the vice-president wasn’t there.
Vice-President George M. Dallas left the Senate for the rest of the session on March 2, 1849 and the senate picked Atchison to preside in his place.
Presidents were inaugurated later back there—March 4th (the 25th Amendment adopted in 1933 moved the date to January). The date fell on a Sunday in 1849. Pesident James Polk signed his last bill early in the moring of March 4 because the Senate had been in session all night. In fact, it didn’t adjourn until 7 a.m.
Incoming President Zachary Taylor did not want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and did not take the oath of office until noon, Monday, March 8.
Some argue that Atchison, as president pro tem, was in line to be president of the country under the succession act of 1792. But Congress had adjourned its session that Sunday morning, meaning Atchison no longer held a Congressional office and therefore there was no line of succession.
He never claimed he was president, “never for a moment” as he wrote in 1880. The truth seems to be that there was no president and no congress for almost a day. In those days of slow national and international communication, there was no crisis.
That’s why the Atchison presidential library, those two display cases in the railroad depot, is “unofficial.”
Incidentally—there was a corresponding controversy in 1877 when Rutheford B. Hays, apparently seeking to avoid another Atchison affair, took took the oath of office in a private ceremony on Saturday, March 3. But President Grant’s term did not end officially until March 4th. Some think that meant we had TWO presidents for a day.
Speaking of Grant—
Missouri claims him although he was not a native. He married Julia Dent, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis County farmer and took up farming in the area. Grant was Ohio-born and his real name Hiram Ulysses Grant. He didn’t like his first name and preferred to be known byhis mddleone. He became known as Ulysses S. Grant because Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated him for appointment to West Point apparently not realizing his first name was Hiram and addig a “S” as a middle initial—Grant’s mother’s maiden name was Simpson.
There is at least one letter from Grant during his West Point years in which he signed, “U. H. Grant.” In time he came to accept the Ulysses S(for Simpson) Grant. His tactics during the Civil War led to his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender.
Grant’s father-in-law gave the young couple some of his land for their own farm. But the venture was unsuccessful. He also was unsuccessful in other business ventures.
He rejoined the Army at the start of the war and was a Colonel based in Mexico Missouri when he read in a newspaper that he had been appointe Brigadier General. He commended the unit at Jefferson City for a few days before being dispatched to southeast Missouri where he began building his fame.
Missourian Mark Twain became his close frend in his last days when the family was living in very poor conditions—there was no presidential pension then—and Grant was slowly dying of throat cancer. Twain arranged to have Grant’s two-volume autobiography published after his death. Sales gave the family some financial security.
In 1903 the Busch family bought the land, now known as Grant’s Farm. Today his farm, his cabin, and the mansion of the Dent Family are part of the Busch family estate.
And that brings us to our native-borne president, Harry Truman, who also has an “S” that means nothing. He was born in Lamar, in southwest Missouri, a town where famous Wyatt Earp had his first law enforcement job. He also has an S between his first and last names but, unlike Grant, it’s not a mistake. Formally, there’s no period after the letter because it doesn’t stand for any specific name although he often put a period there. The “S” honors his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.
His extensive story is a familiar one to Missourians but there’s a special angle that links Jefferson City to the Man from Independence. In the 1930s while he was the Presiding Judge of the Jackson County administratie court, President Roosevelt appointed him to head the administrations jobs program. Three days a week, he drove to Jefferson City where he did business out of a fourth-floor room at the Capitol. It was during that time that the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City called him to a meeting in Sedalia to tell him he was going to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Roscoe Patterson in the 1934 election. There are those who think the Pendergasts wanted him to lose so they could put their own man in the presiding judge’s chair and get Truman out of Jackson County politics. Truman, however, beat Patterson, beginning a career in Washington that led him in 1944 to the vice-presidential nomination and ultimately his historic years in the White House.
We’ve had some others who sought the presidency or thought they might seek it.
Governor Benjamin Gratz Brownan Unconditional Unionist in the Civil War and a founder of he Republican Party in Missouri. He tried to get Abraham Lincoln replaced as the Republican nominee in 1864, strongly opposed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, was defeated in the 1872 convention by New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley—and they ultimately were crushed by former Missouri failed farmer U.S. Grant.
Congressman Richard Parks Bland was the leader going into the 1896 Democratic National Convention. But his marriage to a Catholic woman generated opposition within the party and he lost to William Jennings Bryan on the fifth ballot.
Champ Clark, the only Missourian to serve as Speaker of the House, was the leading candidate at the 1912 Democratic Convention. Although he was favored by a majority of delegates he never could get to the required two-thirds. It took 46 ballots for the convention to choose Woodrow Wilson over him.
Young Christopher Bond was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party when the convention met in 1976 in Kansas City and was on a short-list of potential running mades for Gerald Ford. His 12,000 vote upset loss to Joseph Teasdale in November crashed dreams of the White House. But he beat Teasdale in a 1980 rematch and went on to a distinguished career as a United States Senator.
Thomas Eagleton sought the vice-presidency under George McGovern’s campaign. But reports that he had undergone some electro-shock treatments for depression ended is VP run a few weeks after the convention.
Congressman Jerry Litton was a charismatic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1976 who died with his wife and two children and two other people when their airplane crashed on takeoff from the Chillicothe Airport on their way to a victory party in Kansas City. Litton was known to think he was presidential material. Jimmy Carter, who was elected President that day, thought that Litton would be President some day. The Senatorship went to John Danforth. His top aide told me sometime afterwards that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton. The what-if game can ponder whether we might have seen a Reagan-Litton contest or a Litton-Bush 41.
We haven’t had a serious contestant since, although there are rumors that Josh Hawley would like to be the running mate of Donald Trump in 2024.
Some presidents bring honor to the office. Others bring dishonor and all of them fall somewhere in between. Today we honor those who served and the office they held.
It is one of the Monday holidays decreed by Congress in 1968. Although we call it Presidents Day, Congress has never changed its original designation: Washington’s birthday.
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