Date: May 26, 2006 11:59:48 PM PDT
Subject: Coincidences Aplenty in the History of White House Deaths-in-Office
Party affiliations of Presidents who died in office:
(1800/ 4th of July) John Adams - Federalist (but "his guiding principles were embodied in a Whig philosophy to which he clung stubbornly")
(1820 / 4th of July) James Monroe - Federalist
(Monroe's vice president, John Quincy Adams, became a Whig
as the party-polarity became Whigs vs Jacksonian Democrats,
many of the older Federalists joining the ranks of the Whigs)
(1800 / 4th of July) Thomas Jefferson
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the upper classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not necessarily the wisest. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The [division into] Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."
--Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.
"The Tories are for strengthening the power of the Executive and [Federal] Government; the Whigs cherish the representative branch <Congress> and the rights reserved by the States as the bulwark against consolidation [of centralized government], which inevitably generates monarchy."
--Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823
(1840) William Henry Harrison - Whig
(took ill 4th of July) Zachary Taylor - Whig
(1860) Abraham Lincoln - lifelong Whig, later a Republican
(1880) James Garfield - Republican ("Party of Lincoln")
(1900) Wiliam McKinley - Republican
(1920) Warren J. Harding - Republican
(1940) Franklin D. Roosevelt - "federalist" Democrat
(1960) John F. Kennedy - "federalist" Democrat
(1980) Ronald Reagan - Republican
(2000) George W. Bush - Republican
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VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEATHS IN OFFICE:
George Clinton (heart attack, 1812) under James Madison,
Elbridge Gerry (heart attack, 1814) also under James Madison,
William King (tuberculosis, 1853) under Franklin Pierce,
Henry Wilson (stroke, 1875) under Ulysses S. Grant,
Thomas Hendricks (natural causes, 1885) under Grover Cleveland,
Garrett Hobart* (heart attack, 1899) under William McKinley
James Sherman (kidney disease, 1912) under Howard Taft
*Some IRONIC coincidences: HOBART had been offered the vice presidency earlier by President Garfield. If he had accepted that nomination, (1) Hobart would have become president when Garfield was assassinated in 1881. Had he lived just two years longer and had remained on the ticket in McKinley's second term, (2) Hobart would have become president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. (And If Hobart had succeeded to the Presidency as Garfield's VP, his Secretary of War would have been Robert Todd Lincoln**, who witnessed Garfield's assassination and would also witness McKinley's assassination.)
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Regarding presidential assassinations, Abraham Lincoln's firstborn son was the central figure in not one but several coincidences.
<Nowadays, Lincoln's son would be scrutinized as a "person of interest">
The night President Lincoln was shot, **ROBERT TODD LINCOLN (then about 21 years of age) had been invited by his father to accompany him to the theater, but he had declined.
When President Garfield was shot in a Washington, D.C. train station in 1881, Robert Todd Lincoln (then Garfield's Secretary of War) was present, at the President's invitation.
When President William McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901, Lincoln was present again, at the President's invitation.
Yet Robert Todd Lincoln was never "an actual eyewitness" to these 3 assassinations. After McKinley's death, Lincoln let it be known that he wanted no further invitations from any US president, since three of them had invited him to attend their assassinations ...
In another odd coincidence, Robert Todd Lincoln was narrowly rescued from a fall that could have resulted in serious injury or even death, by actor Edwin Booth -- the brother of John Wilkes Booth, soon to be his father's assassin. Although it was never mentioned by him until 1909, this incident occurred at a railway station in Jersey City, when he was traveling from New York City to Washington, a year or two before President Lincoln was shot.
...
Robert Todd Lincoln (August 1, 1843 – July 26, 1926) was the first son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Ann Todd. Born in Springfield, Illinois, United States, he was the only one of President Lincoln's four sons to reach adulthood.
Robert Lincoln graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, then studied at Harvard University from 1861 to 1864 where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. He then enrolled in Harvard Law School. However, he did not graduate and in 1865 joined the Union Army. He held the rank of Captain, serving in the American Civil War as part of General Ulysses S. Grant's immediate staff, in a position which sharply minimized the likelihood that he would be involved in actual combat.
Following his father's assassination, in May of 1865 he, his brother Thomas (Tad) Lincoln (1853–1871), and their mother moved to Chicago where Robert completed his law studies at the University of Chicago (a school different from the university presently known by that name). He was admitted to the bar on February 25, 1867.
In 1877 he turned down President Rutherford B. Hayes' offer to appoint him Assistant Secretary of State, but did accept an appointment as US Secretary of War from 1881 to 1885, serving under Presidents James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur.
Under President Benjamin Harrison, he served as US ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1889 and 1893. In London, his son Jack, only 16, died of blood poisoning. Afterwards he returned to private business as a lawyer. He became General Counsel for, and subsequently the President and Chairman of the Board of, the Pullman Palace Car Company where he worked until his retirement in 1922.
He made his last public appearance at the dedication ceremony in Washington, D.C. for his father's memorial on May 30th of that year.
