17. Andrew Johnson

It is easy in hindsight to assign many of the difficulties faced by Andrew Johnson to the fact that he was elevated to the presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln has become a giant among United States presidents and Johnson has had to live in the shadow of this titan for 147 years; but at the time of his presidency, Lincoln was only marginally popular.  It is difficult to say what his approval rating was, as most of the modern approval rating agencies didn’t start until the 1930s.  If you look at the election of 1864 Lincoln only won 55% of the popular vote (he won 40% in 1860).  You also have to remember that the Southern states didn’t vote in the election of 1864, and I doubt that he had much support in the region.

Johnson was born in 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina into a poverty-stricken family.  The family’s situation was made even worse when his father died when Andrew was only three years old.  When he was ten his mother apprenticed him to a tailor where he learned the trade.  In his late teens, Johnson moved to Greenville, Tennessee where, as luck would have it, the best tailor had just left town.  Opening up his own tailor shop had far reaching ramifications.  Shortly after arriving in Greenville he married a younger Eliza McCardle (I am finding conflicting reports on the ages of the newlyweds; she was either sixteen or seventeen and he was either eighteen or nineteen).  Since he had almost no formal education his new wife set about to teach him reading, writing and math.  After the couple joined a debating society, his tailor shop became a center of activity when the neighbors would come in to to discuss the important issues of the day.  At the age of twenty he was elected as an alderman and then elected mayor of Greenville in 1833 at the age of twenty-four.

Next up was a term in the Tennessee Legislature in 1835.  He was defeated for reelection in 1837, but reclaimed the seat four years later.  Continuing his move up the political ladder, Johnson won a term in the Tennessee Senate in 1843.  With only a single two year term he then made the move to Washington, D.C. by winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee’s first district.  For the next ten years he advocated the rights of workers and farmers, and opposed tariffs because he felt the higher prices they created were unfairly felt by the poor.  After 10 years in Washington DC Johnson headed back to Tennessee to serve two terms as the Governor.  During his two terms he was a vocal supporter of education, supporting equal pay for male and female teachers alike and setting standards for the teaching profession.  He established the state’s first public library and agricultural fair. (It’s rumored that he really loved the deep-fried Snickers.)

When the state legislature elected him to be a US Senator in 1856, Johnson said, “I have reached the pinnacle of my career.”  As early as 1856 his name was being mentioned as a potential presidential candidate.  Johnson never took a firm stance on the question of slavery, but he felt that it was a state’s right issue.  However, he was a Unionist and did not believe that secession was legal.  When the Southern states seceded and their representatives and senators walked out, Johnson was the only senator that remained.  Once the Union Army was able to clear the Confederate army from a state, a military government was established.  Andrew Johnson was appointed as the military governor of Tennessee in 1862.  In this position he required that everyone swear allegiance to the Constitution, going so far as to replace the mayor of Nashville and entire city council when they refused.  He shut down anti-Union newspapers, arrested clergyman whose sermons were anti-Union, seized the railroads, and imposed new taxes.

At the Republican Convention in 1864, they renamed it the National Union Convention and opened it to anyone interested in preserving the Union.  This allowed the Republicans and War Democrats to unite behind a Lincoln-Johnson ticket.  During the inaugural activities, Johnson was suffering from typhoid fever and sipped some brandy to offset the pain and help him stay alert.  Unfortunately, when it came time for him to be inaugurated and give his speech, he gave a rambling speech mumbling many of his words giving many in attendance the impression that he was drunk (which he may very well have been).  This led to rumors that he was a heavy drinker, which would haunt him the rest of his life.

Johnson became president after the first assassination of an American President, a highly explosive time.  Both Lincoln and Johnson had been pushing a conciliatory approach to bringing the South back into the Union, but the mood in the north had not been good toward the South before the assassination.  After the assassination there were very outspoken calls for harsh punishment of the Confederates.  An additional factor that led to his impeachment was the difference in opinion between the two sides in what it would take to bring the rebel states back into the Union.  Johnson did not believe that the states had left the Union since secession was unconstitutional.  The Radical Republicans, on the other hand, believed that the states would have to go through the same process as any new state to gain admittance into the Union.  The major difference here is that in Johnson’s opinion the treatment of the Southern states fell to the executive branch exclusively whereas the Radical Republicans believed that the Senate had to approve any measures.

Congress adjourned between April and December 1865.  While they were out Johnson moved quickly to implement his Reconstruction program.  He offered full membership to all seceded states if they met a couple of conditions:

• 10% of their citizens would need to swear an oath to uphold the constitution
• State conventions needed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery

Only after meeting these criteria would the states be allowed to hold elections for national senators and representatives.  He recognized the new government in Virginia by May 9th.  Amnesty was offered to all Confederate veterans who would swear allegiance to the Union.  The remaining states moved quickly to meet the criteria to be recognized, but began introducing “black codes”, laws that were designed to put limits on the civil rights of the freed slaves.  The returning Radical Republicans seized on these “black codes”.  They created a Joint Committee on Reconstruction and made the leader of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens, the chairman.  The moderates in the Republican party passed a compromise Civil Rights Law that Johnson vetoed.  The Republicans overrode his veto marking the first time that a Congress overrode a presidential veto on such an important issue.

They moved to propose a Fourteenth Amendment that included a provision to refuse a seat to anyone that had served in the Confederate Congress.  It would also created new civil rights laws that could be protected by federal courts.

In the mid-term election of 1866, Johnson traveled the country giving speeches and trying to rally the old War Democrat/Moderate Republican alliance to no avail.  The Republicans won the election in a landslide and took over the task of Reconstruction.  The irony is that had Johnson sought to work with the moderate Republican senators and representatives, much of the animosity could have been avoided.  The first attempt to impeach Johnson failed to pass the House in December 1867.

In March 1867, Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act that simply stated that the president could not remove an office holder, including a cabinet member, without the approval of Congress.  Johnson had vetoed the act claiming that it was unconstitutional.  Congress overrode the veto and the law went into effect.  The president would be permitted to suspend a person when Congress was not in session, but then when Congress returned they would have to agree with the removal.  In August 1867, Johnson decided to push the issue and suspended Edward Stanton, the Secretary of War and a Radical Republican sympathizer.  When Congress reconvened in January 1868 they refused to approve the removal.  Johnson ignored them and moved to replace Stanton.  The first impeachment of an American President was underway. 

The House of Representatives drew up eleven articles of impeachment and the trial moved to the Senate.  Comparing this process to the normal legal process shows that being impeached is similar to being indicted.  A trial in the Senate would determine whether or not the president should be removed from office.  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acted as the judge in the trial with the full Senate acting as the jury to vote on guilt or innocence.  Johnson survived being removed from office by one vote, but only because his removal required a two-thirds vote.  In later Supreme Court rulings they agreed with Johnson that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional.  Obviously Johnson for the rest of his term could only veto legislation (he ended up with twenty-nine vetoes, the most of any president up to then).

After leaving office he returned to Tennessee and remained politically active, eventually regaining the respect that he had earned before becoming president.  He was elected to serve in the US Senate in 1874. When he walked on to the Senate floor to take his seat he received a standing ovation.  He only served a few months before he died from a stroke in July.

Johnson left a legacy of fighting for the Homestead Act which provided land to settlers for a small fee, showed a sense of devotion to the country by refusing to resign when Tennessee seceded and the purchase of the territory of Alaska (for the equivalent of $113 million in current terms).  His ranking among presidents is consistently near the bottom.  Historians point to his inability to work with the moderate members of Congress to avoid the showdowns with the Radical Republicans as evidence of his ineffective leadership.  The Radical Republicans gained power and went on to define the Reconstruction period.  The next few presidents would have to deal with those policies.

A few interesting facts:

• Andrew Johnson was the only president that was a tailor (unless you count Zachary ‘Taylor’).  He would wear only the suits that he had made himself.
• He was the first president to be impeached, surviving by only one vote in the Senate.
• Johnson was buried just outside Greeneville, Tennessee, with his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution placed under his head, according to his wishes.
• He is the only former president to serve in the Senate after leaving office.
• One of Johnson's last significant acts was granting unconditional amnesty to all Confederates on Christmas Day, December 25, 1868, after the election of Ulysses S. Grant to succeed him, but before Grant took office in March 1869.
• He was successful in getting Tennessee exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation (the only southern state exempted).  He successfully argued that the gesture would stave off open rebellion against his military government.
• The Lincoln-Johnson administration was only the second time that the president and vice-president were from different parties (Adams-Jefferson in 1796).
• Johnson is one of only four presidents (W.H. Harrison, Taylor and Carter) that did not appoint a Supreme Court Justice.  This was due to Congress reducing the size of the Supreme Court from 10 to 7 justices in 1867.
• Andrew and Eliza had 4 children in 7 years from 1828 to 1834.  They then had another son 27 years later!

Vital Stats:

• Wife: Eliza McCardle
• Children: Martha (1828-1901), Charles (1830-1963), Mary (1832-1883), Robert (1834-1869), Andrew Jr. (1852-1879)
• Party affiliation: Democratic Party 
• Presidency: 1864-1868
• Born: December 29th, 1808 (Raleigh, North Carolina) 
• Died: July 31, 1875 (Carter’s Station, Tennessee)

16. Abraham Lincoln

 

Ten score and two years ago one father brought forth on this continent a new son, conceived in Kentucky and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  I am confident that everyone reading this blog knows where the speech that I have paraphrased was given.  Certainly in recent years Lincoln is considered one of our greatest presidents.

Lincoln was born in 1809 in Kentucky to one of the richest men in the county.  Unfortunately, by the time Abe was seven, his father, Thomas, lost everything due to a faulty title.  His father moved the family across the Ohio river in 1816 to southwestern Indiana.  Tragedy struck again when Abe was nine-years-old;  his mother, Nancy, died of milk sickness (as well as her aunt and uncle who had followed them).  His older sister, Sarah, helped take care of him until his father remarried a year later to a widow named Sarah Johnston.  Abe became very close to his step-mother.  It was Sarah that taught Abraham to read and write.  Lincoln only had about one year of formal education in his entire life.

In 1830 there were reports of outbreaks of milk sickness along the Ohio river, and his father moved the family to Illinois.  It wasn’t long after this move that a twenty-two-year-old Abe moved out of the house and started his new life.  His next couple of years would see him transporting goods from New Salem, Illinois down the Mississippi River by flatboat to New Orleans, owning a small general store and running for the Illinois Legislature. He lost that election at the age of twenty-three.  Before the election occurred Lincoln was elected to captain in the Illinois militia to serve in the Black Hawk War.  The war saw two future presidents : Lincoln and Taylor.  On a side note (I need at least one digression) Zachary Taylor accepted Chief Black Hawk’s surrender and, with Jefferson Davis (future president of the Confederacy) and Robert Anderson (future commander of Fort Sumter), escorted the fallen chief to military barracks.

Winning election to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, Lincoln went on to serve four terms.  In that time, he supported expansion over voting rights to non-land-owning males, as well as women.  He was in favor of a strong federal government and supported business friendly laws.  During this time he was admitted to the bar (1836) and continued to study and practice law.  After he left office he focused on his law practice and started traveling on the circuit.  He literally traveled a circuit around fifteen Illinois counties for six months of the year defending cases in front of the judge that he was traveling with.  This had the added bonus of starting to create his political base.  In those days there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment so many people would go to court to hear the cases being argued.  The court houses began to fill up with spectators as Lincoln gained reputation as a dynamic speaker.

In 1846 Lincoln won election to the US House of Representatives where he served only one term.  Believing that the Mexican War was illegal, Lincoln demanded that President Polk show where exactly American troops were attacked and to prove that it was on American soil.  It was largely his opposition to the war that cost him re-election.

Back in Illinois, he resumed his law practice and became a well-known attorney, arguing cases in front of the Illinois Supreme Court exactly 175 times and the Chicago Federal Court.  In 1854 Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for an US Senate seat.  At the 1856 election of the young Republican party convention Lincoln came in second for the vice-presidential nomination.  This was followed by getting the Republican nomination for a US Senate seat, running against Stephen Douglas.  It was after receiving the nomination that Lincoln gave a speech with the famous phrase "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." This campaign also featured one of the most famous series of debates, certainly in American history.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates consisted of a series of seven debates throughout the state.  As many as 15,000 showed up to listen to them.  The format was that the first speaker would get sixty minutes, the other would follow with ninety minutes and then the original speaker would finish with thirty minutes.  As the incumbent senator Douglass spoke first in four of the seven debates.  In those days, US Senators were not directly elected by the people; they were elected by the state legislatures.  This was important to the outcome, because Lincoln helped the Republicans get more popular votes, but the Democrats retained control of the legislature.  With the passage of the 17th amendment to the US Constitution in 1913, this is no longer the case.

After his loss, Lincoln was invited to speak in New York City at the Cooper Union.  What has become known as the Cooper Union Speech was what vaulted Lincoln to the top of the list of potential presidential candidates in the 1860 election.  I’ve attached a link to a YouTube video showing Sam Waterston reenacting the famous speech.  It really is an interesting speech if you have an extra hour and a half minutes to take a look.  Though he was still in the early stages of making a name for himself, his team worked the delegates hard to get them to agree to use Lincoln as their second choice if their preferred candidate couldn’t win.  His two main rivals for the Republican nomination were William Seward and Salmon Chase.  Those two factions wouldn’t budge and the nomination went to Lincoln as the second choice.

In a bit of an irony, the Democrats nominated his old debate buddy Stephen Douglas.  However, Douglas had lost some support in the South in part due to his statements on whether or not territories could outlaw slavery.  The southern Democrats suffered a schism on this matter and nominated John Breckinridge instead.  By splitting the party they almost insured the election of Lincoln.  Even with this advantage, Lincoln won with only forty percent of the popular vote!  I should note that in that particular election, there was over an eighty percent voter turnout.

To keep this blog post at a reasonable length I will skip the stuff you already know: the southern states seceded, Lincoln didn’t believe that was legal, he sent an army into the south to put down what he felt was an insurrection and we fought a civil war for four years.  Despite the top-notch people around him, Lincoln insisted on making the decisions himself.  He let his cabinet argue an issue for awhile and then he would decide.  There are many facets of Lincoln’s presidency one could focus on; the Emancipation Proclamation, the Homestead Act, the war itself and his relationship with the Union generals, etc.

There is a great book called Team of Rivals written by Doris Kearns Goodwin that talks about Lincoln and his cabinet.  Spielberg is making this book into a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis.  Lincoln was very careful in his selection to pick not only the leaders of his party for his cabinet, but also to balance it geographically.  His selections also kept equilibrium between the moderate and extremes of the Republican party.  Most notable in his cabinet were William Seward (Secretary of State, who stayed on with Johnson and negotiated the purchase of Alaska) and Salmon Chase (Secretary of the Treasury; Chase bank is named after him).

I believe that Lincoln understood that the question of slavery had to be dealt with once and for all.  When the southern states seceded, he believed that if they could be defeated, slavery could be abolished.

Lincoln was shot and killed on April 14th (died April 15th) in Ford’s Theater in Washington DC watching a play called “My American Cousin”, just 3 days after declaring the war’s end.  All three times that I have been to DC, the theater has been closed for renovation!  For many reasons, it is unfortunate that Lincoln was killed.  He believed that the southern states needed to be dealt with fairly.  Fair terms were proposed by Lincoln for the rebel soldiers.  In contrast, many of the radical Republicans wanted to punish the southern states and would get their chance after battling the much weaker Andrew Johnson.  To take a quote from Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address:

“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether". With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Lincoln is considered one of our greatest presidents because he held firm to his convictions and was decisive in a time of turmoil.  No aspect of the war escaped his attention.  At the same time, for maybe the first time, a president took the step of saying that because it was a time of war it gave the president sole authority over a lot of national issues.  This example was repeated by Wilson and F.D.R. during the world wars.

I highly recommend at least two things: read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book and visit the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois.  Both are well worth the time and effort.  I tried to focus on some of the lesser known facts of Lincoln, but it is difficult to tackle the complexity and multi-faceted aspects of Lincoln in a short blog posting.  Once I’ve completed the other presidents I may come back with another posting focused on his years in the White House.

Trivia

• Lincoln is the only president who was a licensed bartender.  He was the co-owner of a saloon in Springfield called Berry and Lincoln.
• He was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration.  In the photo John Wilkes Booth is standing nearby.
• Abraham’s son Robert Todd Lincoln was present for the assassination of three presidents; his father, James Garfield and William McKinley.  After McKinley was shot Robert vowed to never be seen in public with a sitting president.
• Lincoln was the first president to have a beard
• He is the only president to have received a patent (#6469)
• His son Willie was the first child to die in the White House
• The words “That these dead shall not have died in vain” were taken from a biography of George Washington.  It is the book that Lincoln borrowed and was destroyed by water.  It cost him some labor on the farmers land that he borrowed the book from.
• He was the first president born outside the original 13 states.
• Of his four sons only Robert lived to adulthood.
• In 1876 a group of men attempted to steal Lincolns body and hold it for ransom to get a counterfeiter out of jail.
• Lincoln was one of seven presidents to be born in a log cabin (the others were Jackson, Taylor, Fillmore, Buchanan, Grant, and Garfield, ironically W. H. Harrison is associated with being born in a log cabin due to his Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign, he was neither born nor ever lived in a log cabin).

15. James Buchanan

Consistently ranked near the bottom of presidential polls, (40th in the latest USPC poll) Buchanan entered the White House as one of the most experienced with over 40 years of public service.  As a young man Buchanan practiced law in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and by the age of thirty, he estimated his wealth at $300,000 (that’s at least $6,000,000 in 2011 dollars using CPI).  His first elected office was in the Pennsylvania State Legislature in 1814 (at the age of 23).  Once reelected in 1815, he set his sights on, and won, a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1820. 

It was around this time that personal tragedy struck.  At the time, he was engaged to the daughter of Pennsylvania’s first millionaire.  Anne Coleman’s family did not approve of the union and she, giving in to the family wishes, broke off the engagement.  There were also rumors at the time that Buchanan was only marrying her for the political connections and, of course, money.  During the courtship Buchanan was busy with his law practice, and would be away from her for weeks at a time.  Whatever the cause of the break-up, Anne died soon after.  There some speculation that she died from suicide.  He never considered marriage to another woman (he kept the letters from Anne for the rest of his life and had them burned upon his death).

Originally elected as a Federalist, Buchanan became a Jacksonian Democrat and was appointed by Jackson to be Minister to Russia.  In 1834, Buchanan was elected to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate, where he served until 1845 (this involved winning 3 elections, a partial in 1834, a full term in 1836 and 1840).  After the death of Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin in 1844 President Polk nominated Buchanan to fill the vacant seat.  Buchanan declined, due to the need to complete his work on the Oregon Treaty negotiations (he was chairman of the Senate committee on Foreign Relations).  He did resign his Senate seat in 1845 to become Secretary of State for James K. Polk.  As Secretary of State he assisted in the completion of the treaty with Great Britain that located the northern border of the United States at the 49th parallel. 

With the election of Zachary Taylor in 1848, Buchanan retired from public life, purchasing a large estate near Lancaster.  Even though Buchanan had never married, he had a large extended family from his ten brothers and sisters (all but one of his siblings had died by 1840).  He had twenty-two nieces and nephews, in addition to many of their children; his home was never quiet.

Franklin Pierce appointed Buchanan to be the Minister to Great Britain.  It was during this period that Buchanan was involved in the Ostend Manifesto which I covered in the write up of Franklin Pierce. On a side note, when Buchanan was Minister to Great Britain his secretary was a man named Daniel Sickles. Sickles was quite the character. He murdered the son of Francis Scott Key for having an affair with his wife, was a regular attendee at the séances with Mary Todd Lincoln and lost his leg at the Battle of Gettysburg. If you’re interested there is a great book about him called American Scoundrel.

Pierce had become increasingly unpopular by this time, thus the Democratic nomination went to Buchanan in the election of 1856.  Because Buchanan had been in England during all of the debates on the Kansas-Nebraska act, he had not had to publically state a position on slavery.  This kept him as a viable option for people on both sides of the issue.  Buchanan defeated John C. Fremont and Millard Fillmore in the election.  Fremont was the first presidential candidate from the new Republican party and former President Fillmore was—this is a bit confusing—running as both a Whig and a Know-Nothing candidate.  (I’m not sure who the marketing genius was that came up with the Know-Nothing party, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a selling tag line.)

The issue of slavery had dominated national politics for decades at this point.  Buchanan was a Northerner, but believed that slavery should be allowed to exist in the South.  In the days between his election and inauguration the Supreme Court was about to release their decision on the Dred Scott case.  Buchanan had been in discussions with one of the justices where he stated that the court should take a broad view on the topic.  He was told that most of the justices wanted to take a broad view, but that some of the Northern justices were opposed to such a thing.  He convinced the justice from Pennsylvania to support the broad view and it passed.  The decision was announced by Chief Justice Taney just two days after the inauguration.  The Dred Scott case had far reaching effects.  It stated that slaves were not and could never be United States citizens, that the federal government had no constitutional authority to prohibit slavery in the new territories (or states), and that slaves were property and could not be taken away from their owners without due process.  The Supreme Court has never overturned the Dred Scott decision; instead Congress and the states passed the 14th amendment.

The slavery question continued to get emotions raging on both sides of the question.  In 1859, John Brown seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.  Buchanan sent in the army to put down the action.  The officer in charge of the troops was Colonel Robert E. Lee.

Buchanan did not run for reelection in the 1860 election, the one that made Abraham Lincoln the next president.  Starting in December 1860, seven states seceded from the  Union.  In spite of this, Buchanan did not make any effort to fortify the federal forts and arsenals in the south, claiming that it would just incite them to violence.  By the time he left office all federal property was in the hands of the Confederacy, with the exception of Fort Sumter.  He had made an agreement with the Governor of South Carolina that the garrison at Fort Sumter would not be reinforced.  However he failed to mention this to Major Anderson, the commander at Charleston, who decided to move his troops to Fort Sumter as it could be more easily defended than Fort Moultrie.

It is easy to imagine what a stronger president would have done in the same situation.  Would Andrew Jackson have let the Southern states secede so easily?  While Buchanan believed that what the Southern states did by seceding was illegal, but didn’t believe that the federal government could do anything about it outside the courts.  He did not believe that the federal government had the constitutional right to send federal troops into a state without permission from that state.

Could he have averted the Civil War?  Possibly.  It certainly would have made a difference had he acted aggressively to reinforce the federal forts and armories, but would that have just started the war earlier?

More facts to amaze and inspire your friends:

• He is the only president elected from Pennsylvania
• He has been the last US Secretary of State to become president (so far)
• In 1852, Buchanan was named president of the Board of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; he served in this capacity until 1866.
• The only bachelor president
• The presidential election of 1856 was the last time the Whig party fielded a candidate (Millard Fillmore)
• Buchanan is the last of only two Democratic presidents to win election following the term of another Democratic president (Van Buren was the other).  This does not account for Democrats that became president after a death.
• When he was a Senator, and during his Presidency, Buchanan quietly, but consistently, bought slaves in DC to then set them free in Pennsylvania.

Vital Stats:

• Wife: None
• Children: None 
• Party affiliation: Democratic Party 
• Presidency: 1857-1861
• Born: April 23rd, 1791 (Cove Gap, Pennsylvania)
• Died: June 1st, 1868 (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)