JOHN TYLER, the first Vice-president to receive promotion to the Presidency in mid-term, was at his home in Virginia when Harrison died. He came to Washington at once and took lodgings at a hotel, where, two days later, he was sworn in by Chief Judge Cranch of the Circuit Court of the District. His administration was not picturesque in the usual sense; the most it gave people to talk about was his narrow escape from impeachment for deserting the party which elected him. But his unpopularity bore valuable fruit for Washington. When the partisan excitement was at its highest pitch, a company of local politicians went to the White House one night and, drawn up in front of it, “groaned” their disapproval of Tyler’s conduct. To protect the Presidential office from further indignities of that sort, a bill was introduced in the Senate to establish an “auxiliary guard” for the defense of the public and private property against incendiaries, and “for the enforcement{178} of the police regulations of the city of Washington,” with an appropriation of seven thousand dollars to equip a captain and fifteen men with the proper implements to distinguish them in the discharge of their duty. This was the foundation of the Metropolitan Police force, which now numbers seventy-five officers and more than six hundred privates.

Life at the White House was simple in Tyler’s time. The President was in the habit of rising with the sun, lighting a fire that had been laid overnight in his study, and working at his desk till breakfast was served at eight o’clock. At this meal he insisted on having the ladies of his family appear in calico frocks. In the evening all the household would gather in the green parlor and pass an hour or two in entertaining any visitors who happened in, interspersing conversation with piano music and old-fashioned songs. It was Tyler who introduced the custom of periodical open-air concerts by the Marine Band; and on warm Saturday afternoons the garden south of the White House was a favorite resort of the best people of the city, while the President would sit with his family and a few invited guests on the porch, listening to the music and responding to the salutations of his acquaintances. Tyler is rarely suspected of possessing a strong sense of humor; but he must have smiled when he signed{179} an official letter to the Emperor of China, in which he described himself as “President of the United States of America, which States are Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan”—an array which so impressed the mind of the Celestial despot that the envoy who presented the missive got everything he asked for.

Tyler lost his wife soon after he entered the White House, and his daughters presided over the domestic life there. He was fond of young society, and one of the belles who appeared pretty regularly at his parties was Miss Virginia Timberlake, daughter of the unfortunate naval purser and the lady whose cause Jackson and Van Buren had championed. Another was Miss Julia Gardiner of New York, who so captivated him that at one of his receptions in the second year of his term he made her a proposal of marriage. As she described it afterward, she was taken wholly by surprise, and gave her “No, no, no!” such emphasis by shaking her head that she whisked the tassel of her crimson Greek cap into his face with every motion. The controlling reason for her refusal, she explained,{180} was her unwillingness to leave her father, to whom she was devotedly attached; but an accident soon changed the whole face of things.

Captain Stockton of the navy invited a party of about four hundred ladies and gentlemen to inspect the sloop-of-war Princeton, then lying in the Potomac. President Tyler, the members of his Cabinet and their families, and a good many Congressmen were among the guests. The vessel had dropped down the river to a point near Mount Vernon, when some of the party importuned Stockton to fire his big gun, nicknamed “the peacemaker.” This was just at the close of the luncheon, and the ladies had lingered at table while most of the gentlemen went on deck. One lady, fortunately, had detained Tyler as he was about to leave, by inducing him to listen to a song; for the gun exploded, killing Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy, Commander Kennon of the navy, Virgil Maxey, lately American Minister at the Hague, and David Gardiner of New York, the father of Miss Julia. A day of merrymaking was thus turned into one of mourning, as the vessel slowly moved up the stream again, bearing the bodies of the dead, for whom funeral services were held at the White House. After an interval the President renewed his suit and found Miss Gardiner more pliant. When he{181}
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Soldiers’ Home

had composed in her honor a serenade beginning, “Sweet lady, awake!” she agreed to marry him if her mother would consent. Her mother did not approve of a union between a man of fifty-six and a girl of twenty, but, as she did not actually forbid it, they had a very quiet wedding.

In spite of the enjoyment he took in social intercourse, Tyler was often criticized for his frigid manners. A virulent type of influenza which became epidemic during his administration received the name of “the Tyler grip,” from the remark of a Boston man who fell ill a few hours after being presented to him: “I probably caught cold from shaking hands with the President.” A good deal was made of this in the campaign of 1844, and added point to John Quincy Adams’s denunciation of Tyler for “performing with a young girl from New York the old fable of January and May!” Tyler’s general unpopularity, and a deadlock between two other prominent candidates, led the Democrats to nominate James K. Polk for President. He was so little known to most of the voters that throughout the campaign the Whigs, who were supporting Henry Clay, rang the changes on the question, “Who is James K. Polk?” thus contrasting his obscurity with Clay’s eminence. The count of ballots showed that a candidate of whom little was known{182} might have certain advantages over one long before the public eye; and as on inauguration day it rained heavily, exultant Democrats kept themselves warm by hurling back at the Whigs the familiar cry, “Who is James K. Polk?” and then laughing wildly at their own humor. It was on this occasion that the telegraph first conveyed out of Washington the news that one President had retired and another had come in—Professor Morse having set up an instrument at the edge of the platform on which the President-elect stood, and ticked off a report of the proceedings as they occurred.

Mrs. Polk being a devoted church-member, of a school which disapproved of dancing, the inaugural ball that evening shrank into a mere promenade concert till after she and her husband had quitted the hall. The social activities of the Polks, through the four years which followed, were consistent with this beginning, all the functions at the White House being too sober to suit the diplomats or the younger element among the resident population. On its practical side, Polk’s term was perhaps the most notable in that generation, including as it did the war with Mexico, which resulted in the annexation of California and the great southwestern area afterward carved into the States of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona and parts of Wyoming,{183} Colorado, and New Mexico. This war, moreover, furnished the usual crop of Presidential candidates, chief among them General Zachary Taylor, who had led the first army across the Rio Grande, and General Winfield Scott, who had wound up the invasion by capturing the city of Mexico.

Believing Taylor the easier to handle, the Whig managers fixed upon him, although, having passed the larger part of his sixty-four years with the army, he had never voted. Indeed, he had always expressed an aversion to office-holding, and, when approached on the subject of the Presidency, met the overture with frank disfavor, declaring that he had neither the capacity nor the experience needed for such a position. But his “availability” overcame the force of his protests, and the Whigs won with him a sweeping victory at the polls. There is pathos in the story of the break-up of the pleasant home in Baton Rouge, and the reluctant removal of the family to Washington, taking with them only a faithful negro servant, a favorite dog, and “Old Whitey,” the horse the General had ridden through the Mexican war. Taylor was with difficulty dissuaded from his purpose of imitating his military predecessors and riding “Old Whitey” either to or from the Capitol on inauguration day. What his friends most feared was his loss of dignity in the eyes{184} of the crowd, for his legs were so short that, in certain emergencies, an orderly had to lift one of them over his horse’s flanks whenever he mounted or dismounted.

Taylor was as simple a soul as Harrison. His unostentatious ways in the army had led the soldiers to dub him “Old Rough and Ready,” and this title stuck to him always afterward. One of his favorite amusements was to walk about Washington, chatting informally with people he met and watching whatever was going on in the streets. His love of comfort was such that he could never be induced to wear clothes that fitted him, but his suits were always a size or two larger than his measure, and these, with a black silk hat set far back on his head, made him recognizable at any distance. His message at the opening of Congress contained one announcement as voluminous as his costume: “We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and the rest of mankind.” The bull was discovered too late to prevent its going out in the original print; but in a revised edition the sentence was made to end: “And seek to maintain our cherished relations of amity with them.”

The White House underwent another grand refurbishing while the Taylors were in it. The east room was newly carpeted, its walls were decorated, and gas replaced its candles and lamps. The ladies of the{185} family were good housekeepers—particularly the younger daughter, who made the old place look actually homelike, and whom an appreciative guest described as doing the honors “with the artlessness of a rustic belle and the grace of a duchess.” But this pleasant picture was soon to be clouded over. On the fourth of July, 1850, a patriotic meeting was held at the base of the Washington National Monument, with long addresses by prominent men. It lasted the whole of a very hot afternoon, and President Taylor, as a guest of honor, felt bound to stay through it, refreshing himself from time to time with copious drafts of ice-water. He reached home in a state of some exhaustion and at once ate a basketful of cherries and drank several glasses of iced milk. From a party to which he had accepted an invitation for that evening he was obliged to excuse himself at the last moment on the score of indisposition. He was violently ill throughout the night, and five days later he died.

Millard Fillmore of New York, fifty years old, of moderate political views and fair ability, was Vice-president at the time. Unlike Tyler, he went to the Capitol to be sworn in the presence of a committee of the two houses, but made no inaugural address. Mrs. Fillmore, who had formerly been a teacher, cared little for society. She was of studious habits and soon{186} converted the oval sitting room in the second story of the White House into a library, personally selecting the books. Her taste ran chiefly to standard historical and classical works; and, as the editions then available were generally not very good specimens of the typographic art, most of her collection has disappeared. In this administration the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, and Fillmore, by signing it, alienated the North so largely that the Whig party refused to nominate him for another term. General Scott, to whom it turned, did precisely what most of the politicians had predicted he would: made a number of public utterances which ruined his chances and thus gave the election to his Democratic competitor, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire.

During Fillmore’s term Louis Kossuth visited Washington. The country was just passing through one of its occasional periods of revolutionary fervor, and Kossuth’s stand for the rights of Hungary against Austria had aroused much sympathy here. Our public men were divided in opinion as to how far to go with their demonstrations in his favor, wishing to win the support of the Hungarians in the United States and of immigrants who had fled from other countries to escape oppression, yet hoping to keep clear of entanglements with Austria. As Kossuth had left home to{187} escape death for high treason and taken refuge in Constantinople, one of our men-of-war was sent to the Dardanelles to bring him to America. He did not then care to go further than England, whence, after an agreeable visit, he came over, in the expectation of inducing our Government to take up arms for Hungarian liberty. Henry Clay, who was already stricken with his last illness, promptly put a damper upon that scheme; but Kossuth remained the guest of the nation for a time and was dined and fêted prodigiously. He maintained the state of a royal personage, keeping a uniformed and armed guard about the door of his suite of apartments at what is now the Metropolitan Hotel, and a lot of carousing young subalterns always in his anteroom. He never appeared in public except in full military uniform, with his cavalry sword, in its steel scabbard, clanking by his side. Mrs. Kossuth, who accompanied him on his tour, was unable to overcome her distrust of American cooking, and used to scandalize her neighbors at table by ostentatiously smelling of every new dish before tasting it.

The inauguration of Pierce was marked by several innovations: he drove to and from the Capitol standing up in his carriage, delivered his address without notes, and made affirmation instead of taking the oath of office. A tragic interest attaches itself to his{188} administration, because, just as he was preparing to remove to Washington, he lost his only child, a boy of thirteen, in a railway accident. Mrs. Pierce, who was an invalid, was terribly broken by this bereavement, and all social festivities at the White House were abandoned till toward the close of her stay there. The new Vice-president, William R. King, was not inaugurated at the same time and place with the President. He had gone to Cuba in January for his health, and, as he was not well enough to come home, Congress passed a special act permitting him to take the oath before the American Consul-general at Havana. Soon after his return to the United States, in April, he died.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a college mate and intimate friend of Pierce, was anxious to see something of Europe, but had not the means to gratify his desire; so Pierce appointed him consul at Liverpool, where he was able to live in comfort on his pay and save enough for a sojourn on the Continent. To this experience American literature owes most of his later work, including “The Marble Faun” and “Our Old Home.” In Washington still linger stories of a visit Hawthorne paid the city about the time of his appointment. Pierce tried to show him some informal attentions; but Hawthorne’s shyness, which went to such an extreme that he could not say anything to the{189} lady next him at table without trembling and blushing, prevented his making much headway socially.

All through Pierce’s term, political conditions were working up to the point which caused the irruption of a few years later. The habit of carrying deadly weapons on the person became so common in Washington, especially in Congress, that scarcely an altercation occurred between two men without the exposure, if not the use, of a pistol or a dirk. The newspapers in their serious columns treated such incidents severely, while the comic paragraphers satirized them; and Preston Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, in a half-earnest, half-cynical vein, gave notice one day of his intention to offer this amendment to the rules of the House: “Any member who shall bring into the House a concealed weapon, shall be expelled by a vote of two-thirds. The Sergeant-at-Arms shall cause a suitable rack to be erected in the rotunda, where members who are addicted to carrying concealed weapons shall be required to place them for the inspection of the curious, so long as the owners are employed in legislation.”

Senator Sumner of Massachusetts having, a few days later, in a speech on slavery, spoken disparagingly of a South Carolina Senator who was absent, Brooks, on the twenty-second of May, 1856, entered the Senate{190} chamber when it was nearly deserted, and, with a heavy gutta-percha cane, rained blows with all his strength upon the head of Sumner, who was quietly writing at his desk. Sumner fell to the floor and for some days thereafter hovered between life and death. He was three or four years in recovering from the direct effects of the assault, and never was entirely restored to health and strength. The incident excited bitter feeling throughout both North and South. For denouncing the assault as paralleling that of Cain upon Abel, Representative Anson Burlingame of New York was challenged by Brooks; he accepted the challenge, naming date, place, and weapons, but Brooks failed to appear on the field.

The next President was James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, also a Democrat. The two incidents in his term which most impressed Washington were the first successful experiments with the Atlantic cable in August, 1858, and the visit to the White House of the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII. Cyrus W. Field, after a struggle as soul-wearing as Morse’s over the introduction of the telegraph, succeeded in making his submarine cable work and induced Queen Victoria to send the first despatch, a message of greeting to President Buchanan, who was requested to answer it in kind. The skepticism of the{191} day toward all scientific novelties was reflected in Buchanan’s summoning a newspaper correspondent whom he trusted and begging to be told frankly whether he were not the victim of a hoax. At the White House all the members of the Cabinet were gathered, earnestly debating the same question. The most stubborn disbeliever was the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, who jeered at the whole thing as a wild absurdity. In spite of Cobb’s resistance, the correspondent persuaded the President to answer the Queen’s message. As bad luck would have it, the cable parted in mid-ocean soon thereafter and was not restored to working order for several years; and in the interval the skeptics were appropriately exultant.

Buchanan, who was our first bachelor President, was sometimes slangily called “the O. P. F.,” having once referred to himself in a message as an “old public functionary.” The image of him carried in the popular mind is derived from contemporaneous pictures, which show him as a stiff, precise, ministerial-looking old man, wearing a black coat, a high choker collar, and a spotless white neckerchief. But t............