Presidential History Geeks

James Madison Jr. descended from a family of plantation owners that had lived in Virginia's Piedmont district for over a century before his birth. Madison was born on March 16, 1751, (March 5, 1750 according to the Julian Calendar, which had been in use at the time of his birth) at Belle Grove Plantation near Port Conway, Virginia. His parents were James Madison Sr. and Nelly Conway Madison. His family had lived in Virginia since the mid-1600s. James Madison's grandmother was the sister of Zachary Taylor's father, making the two presidents second cousins.



Madison was the oldest of twelve children. He had seven brothers and four sisters, but only six of his siblings would live to adulthood. His father was a tobacco planter who grew up on a plantation called Mount Pleasant, which he had inherited from his father. The plantation was operated by approximately 100 enslaved persons, and was 5,000 acres in size, making Madison's father was the largest landowner in the Piedmont region. In those days land holdings was the measure of status. Madison's maternal grandfather was also a prominent planter and tobacco merchant. In the early 1760s, the Madison family moved into a newly built house, which they named Montpelier. It was where James Madison would breathe his last breath in 1836.

The family connections for the Madison family were significant. The clergyman who presided over his baptism was a relative. So was his namesake, Bishop James Madison, the President of the College of William and Mary. As a child, James Jr. was called Jemmy, to distinguish him from his father, James Sr. His father's influence as the largest landholder in the region and patriarch of the family, resulted in his holding the offices of Justice of the Peace, vestryman of the church, and commander of the county militia.

From age 11 to 16, Madison was tutored by Donald Robertson, a Scottish instructor who also tutored the children of a number of prominent planter families. Madison was taught mathematics, geography, and modern and classical languages. He was said to have excelled at Latin. When he turned 16, Madison returned to Montpelier, where he began a two-year course of study under the Reverend Thomas Martin, to prepare him for college. As a child he experienced a number of health problems, and this affected his choice of school. Most children of prominent Virginians at this time were sent to attend the College of William and Mary. But his father was worried that the lowland Williamsburg climate might be a home infectious disease of the day such as cholera or scarlet fever. Instead, Madison was sent to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1769. There he studied Latin, Greek, theology, the works of the Enlightenment scholars, oratory and debate.

At Princeton, Madison became a leading member of the American Whig Society. His closest friend was future Attorney General William Bradford. Madison was able to complete Princeton's three-year bachelor of arts degree in just two years, graduating in 1771. Now at a crossroads in his career, Madison considered entering into either the clergy or the legal profession. Instead, he remained at Princeton to study Hebrew and political philosophy under President John Witherspoon before returning home to Montpelier in early 1772. Witherspoon had a profound influence on Madison's ideas on philosophy and morality. This was said to be where the seeds of Madison's passion for liberty were planted.

After returning to Montpelier, Madison tutored his younger siblings. Probably as a result of Witherspoon's influence, Madison appeared to have made his choice among prospective careers. He began to study law books on his own in 1773. He asked his Princeton friend William Bradford, who was now studying law under Edward Shippen in Philadelphia, to send him a written plan on reading law books. But by 1783, though he had studied a lot of law books, Madison still had not joined the bar or practiced law. He never did.

In 1765, Great Britain had passed the Stamp Act, and the British-American colonies of North America began to demand proper representation and independence. King George III declined to grant the British-American colonies representation in Parliament or independence. The British cited the high cost of aiding the colonists in their fight of the French and Indian War. By the early 1770s the relationship between the British-American colonies and Britain deteriorated over the issue of British taxation, and the American Revolutionary War began in 1775. The American colonists split between two factions, the Loyalists to King George III, and the Patriots. Madison joined the latter, and insisted that those in his county take a loyalty oath to their cause. Madison argued that Parliament had exceeded its authority by imposing taxation on the British-American colonies, without giving them representation in Parliament. He also favored de-establishing the Anglican Church in Virginia, arguing that an established religion was detrimental because it encouraged closed-mindedness and unquestioning obedience to the authority of the state.

In 1774, Madison, took a seat on the local Committee of Safety, a pro-revolution group that oversaw the local Patriot militia. In October 1775, he was commissioned as the colonel of the Orange County militia, serving as his father's second-in-command. This lasted until he was elected as a delegate to the Fifth Virginia Convention, which was charged with producing Virginia's first constitution. Madison was frequently in poor health, and he never saw battle in the Revolutionary War. But he was recognized for his service to his state and to his country as a wartime leader.

At the Virginia constitutional convention of 1776, Madison was able to convince delegates to alter the Virginia Declaration of Rights to provide for "equal entitlement," rather than mere "tolerance," in the exercise of religion. With the passage of the Virginia constitution, Madison was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was subsequently elected to the Virginia governor's Council of State. In that role, he worked closely with Governor Thomas Jefferson.

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was published formally declaring 13 American states an independent nation, no longer under the Crown or British rule. Madison served on the Council of State from 1777 to 1779, when he was elected to the Second Continental Congress, the governing body of the United States. The Continental Congress faced many difficult challenges: war against Great Britain, the world's leading military power, runaway inflation, lack of revenue to finance the war, and lack of cooperation between the different levels of government. Madison soon gained expertise on financial issues, as well as a master of parliamentary procedure. He was frustrated by the failure of the states to supply needed requisitions, and he proposed to amend the Articles of Confederation to grant Congress the power to independently raise revenue through tariffs on foreign imports. General George Washington, Congressman Alexander Hamilton, and many other leading figures favored the amendment, it was defeated because it failed to win the ratification of all thirteen states.



Madison was an ardent supporter of a close alliance between the United States and France, and, as an advocate of westward expansion. He strongly believed that the United States had the right to navigation on the Mississippi River and control of all lands east of it. After serving Congress from 1780 to 1783, Madison won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784.

On June 28, 1836 (184 years ago today) James Madison, Jr. the 4th President of the United States, died at his home Montpelier in Orange, Virginia. He was 85 years of age. Born on March 16, 1751, Madison is remembered as a great statesman, and a great political theorist. He is considered by many to be the "Father of the Constitution" because he was instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and was the author of the Bill of Rights. He was a career politician for most of his adult life.



James Madison, Jr. was born at Belle Grove Plantation near Port Conway, Virginia on March 16, 1751, (March 5, 1751 on the Julian calendar which was then in use). His father was a tobacco planter and a slaveholder. he was small in stature, five feet, four inches in height and it is said that he never weighed more than 100 pounds, making him was the smallest president. During the American Revolutionary War, Madison served in the Virginia state legislature from 1776 to 1779, where he became a protégé of Thomas Jefferson.

Madison attended the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 where he wrote "the Virginia Plan" which became the blueprint for the constitution that was produced at the convention. Madison became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify it. He worked with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to produce the Federalist Papers in 1788. Circulated only in New York at the time, they would later be considered among the most important treatises in support of the Constitution. He was also a delegate to the Virginia constitutional ratifying convention, and was instrumental to the successful ratification effort in Virginia. During the drafting and ratification of the constitution, he favored a strong national government, though later he grew to favor stronger state governments, before finally settling between the two extremes.

In 1789, Madison became a leader in the new House of Representatives, drafting much of its legislation. He drafted the first ten amendments to the Constitution, which led to his being called the "Father of the Bill of Rights". Madison worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government. Breaking with Hamilton and what became the Federalist Party in 1791, Madison and Thomas Jefferson organized what they called the Republican Party (later called the Democratic-Republican Party).

He served as Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809. In that capacity he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's size. Madison was elected President in 1808, succeeding Jefferson. He presided over renewed prosperity for several years and after the failure of diplomatic protests and a trade embargo against Great Britain, he led the nation into the War of 1812. He was responding to end British encroachments on American rights, including impressment of its sailors and influence among Britain's Indian allies, whose resistance blocked United States settlement in the Midwest around the Great Lakes. Madison found the war to be a huge challenge. The nation did not have a strong army nor a strong financial system. When the war ended, he afterward supported a stronger national government and a strong military, as well as the national bank, all of which he had previously opposed.

Like most other Virginia statesmen of that era, Madison was a slaveholder who inherited his plantation known as Montpelier, and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime. Madison supported what was known as the "Three-Fifths Compromise", which allowed three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves to be counted for representation.

When Madison left office in 1817, he retired to Montpelier. He was 65 years old and his wife Dolley was 49. Madison left the presidency a poorer man than when he entered, due to the steady financial collapse of his plantation, aided by the continued low price of tobacco and his stepson's mismanagement. In his later years, Madison became extremely concerned about his historic legacy. He took to modifying letters and other documents in his possession: changing days and dates, adding and deleting words and sentences, and doing other editing. For example, he edited a letter written to Jefferson criticizing the Marquis de Lafayette.



In 1826, after the death of Jefferson, Madison was appointed as the second Rector ("President") of the University of Virginia. He retained the position as college chancellor for ten years until his death in 1836. In 1829, at the age of 78, Madison was chosen as a representative to the constitutional convention in Richmond for the revising of the Virginia state constitution. It was his last appearance as a legislator. Between 1834 and 1835, Madison sold 25% of his slaves to make up for financial losses on his plantation.

In his latter years, even with his bad health, Madison wrote frequently on political subjects, including an essay against the appointment of chaplains for Congress and the armed forces. But Madison found himself ignored by the new political leaders. He died on June 28, and is buried in the Madison Family Cemetery at Montpelier.

When one looks at the life of Harry Truman, it is easy to find reasons why he would probably never become President of the United States. He was not rich, connected, athletic, academically stellar or successful in the business world. He had poor eyesight, never made millions and he certainly had his share of setbacks in life. But he had determination and did not give up on himself, even when many others had.



Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. His parents were John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Young. He was named for his maternal uncle, Harrison "Harry" Young, but his parents couldn't agree of a middle name, so all he got was a middle initial, "S", to honor his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. He was the oldest of three siblings. A brother, John Vivian, was next in the family and he was followed by sister Mary Jane. His first six years of life were spent on a series of farms. John Truman was a farmer and also a livestock dealer. The Truman family lived in Lamar until Harry was ten months old, and then they moved to a farm near Harrisonville, Missouri. After that the family next moved to Belton, and in 1887 to his grandparents' 600-acre farm in Grandview. When Truman was six, his parents moved to Independence, Missouri, the place he always called home.

Independence was a town of 6,000 people. Today it is a suburb just southeast of Kansas City. For his first two years there, Harry attended the Presbyterian Church Sunday School, but did not enroll in the local elementary school until he was eight. Independence had a large Jewish population and as a youth, Harry found work as what was called a "Shabbos goy", which meant that he would do work for his Jewish neighbors that they were prohibited from doing for religious reasons on certain days. He also liked music and as a child he woke up at five a.m. every morning to practice the piano. He took lessons until he was fifteen, and becoming quite a skilled player.



In 1900, the Democratic National Convention was held in Kansas City. Harry Truman's father had many friends who were active in the Democratic Party and 16 year old Harry worked as a page at the convention, at which the great orator William Jennings Bryan was nominated as the Party's Presidential Candidate for the second consecutive time.

Harry Truman graduated from high school the following year in 1901. It was his goal to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he hoped to utilize the political connections he had made. Unfortunately, he had very poor eyesight. A further setback was the state of the family finances. John Truman suffered a series of losses that bankrupted the family. The family could not afford to sent their oldest son to any sort of post-secondary education. Truman is the only president since William McKinley who did not have a college degree.Instead Harry Truman took a job with the Santa Fe Railroad as a payroll clerk. Later he became a bank clerk in Kansas City where he worked until 1906. Truman and his brother Vivian worked as clerks at the National Bank of Commerce in Kansas City. Coincidentally, one of their coworkers, who also lived in the same rooming house, was Arthur Eisenhower, brother of the man who would succeed Truman as President. The job paid reasonably well, but John Truman had resumed farming and needed his son back on the farm. For the next 11 years, that was Harry Truman's job, helping to run the family farm. He did scratch his itch for a military life somewhat by joining the Missouri National Guard artillery unit. He participated in drill sessions and summer encampments, but after two tours of duty he found it was too much to manage along with the demands of the farm.

When he returned to Independence, Truman began courting Bess Wallace. He had known Bess since his school days. She was the oldest of four (she had three younger brothers). Her father had committed suicide in 1903. Truman proposed to Bess in 1911, but she turned him down. Truman was determined to propose again, but he wanted to have a better income than that earned by a farmer.

In 1917, the United States entered the First World War, and Truman re-enlisted in his unit with the National Guard. By now he was a 33 year old farmer, too old to be drafted, but desirous of serving his country. He also had political aspirations, and wrote about them in letters to Bess. Truman had forged friendships with many of the men in the local guard unit, and the practice at the time was for the men to elect their own officers. There was still the issue of his eyesight however. At his induction, his eyesight without glasses was 20/50 in the right eye and 20/400 in the left (past the standard for legal blindness). His vision was too poor to qualify, but he took the test a second time and passed by secretly memorizing the eye chart. He was elected as first lieutenant for his unit.

Truman was sent for training to Camp Doniphan, Fort Sill, near Lawton, Oklahoma, before heading "over there" to France. His regiment became part of the 129th Field Artillery. The regimental commander during its training was Robert M. Danford, who later served as the Army's Chief of Field Artillery and as a mentor to Truman. Truman later said he learned more practical, useful information from Danford in six weeks than from six months of formal Army instruction.

Truman also ran the camp canteen with a man named Eddie Jacobson, a clothing store clerk he knew from Kansas City. The canteen operated by Truman and Jacobson turned a profit. At Fort Sill, Truman met Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, nephew of Tom Pendergast, a Kansas City political boss. This was a connection that would have a profound influence on Truman's political career. In the spring of 1918 Truman was one of about one million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces who were in France at the time. Truman was promoted to captain in July 1918 and became commander of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division. The unit had a reputation for discipline problems, and Truman initially struggled to maintain order. In an incident which became known as "The Battle of Who Run", his soldiers began to flee during a sudden night attack by the Germans in the Vosges Mountains. Truman successfully ordered his men to stay and fight. He won the respect of his men by being tough, fair, and leading by example.

Truman's unit joined in a massive assault barrage on September 26, 1918, at the opening of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. They advanced with over difficult terrain to follow the infantry, and they set up an observation post west of Cheppy. On September 27, Truman ignored orders limiting him to certain targets and he turned his guns on an enemy artillery battery setting up across a river in a position allowing them to fire upon another allied Division. This attack destroyed the enemy battery. His actions were credited with saving the lives of 28th Division soldiers who otherwise would have come under fire from the Germans. Truman was criticized by his regimental commander, Colonel Karl D. Klemm, who threatened to convene a court-martial for not following orders, but it turned out to be an idle threat. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Truman's battery provided support for George S. Patton's tank brigade, and fired some of the last shots of the war on November 11, 1918.

Battery D suffered only one death and one man wounded while under Truman's command in France. He received a commendation from his unit's commanding general. His wartime leadership experience and greatly enhanced and supported his post-war political career in Missouri. His friendship with the Pendergast family didn't hurt either. In May 1919 he was mustered out of the service and returned home to Independence.



The next month, Truman married Bess Wallace on June 28, 1919, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence. He gave up farming for a series of business ventures because he wanted to give his new bride a better standard of living than that provided by a farmer. That didn't go so well. Shortly before the wedding, Truman and his friend Eddie Jacobson had opened a haberdashery together at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. The venture had brief initial success, but the store went bankrupt during the recession of 1921. Truman It took until 1935 to pay off the last of the debts from that venture.

Tom Pendergast and his the Kansas City Democratic machine came to Truman's rescue. With their help Truman was elected in 1922 as one of three County Court judges in Jackson County's eastern district. This was an administrative rather than judicial court, similar to county commissioners in many other jurisdictions. Truman lost his 1924 reelection campaign in a Republican wave. He sold automobile club memberships for the next two years, but was convinced him that a public service career was his best bet, as a family man approaching middle age.

There are two controversies that surround the birth of Chester Alan Arthur. They are when and where.

The when part concerns the year that Arthur was born. His headstone claims that he was born on October 5, 1830. But almost all of his biographers put the date a year earlier than that at October 5, 1829. That is the date that was recorded in the family bible, and it is doubtful that Arthur's father, Reverend William Arthur would have been careless about that. There are two theories for the discrepancy. The first is that as Arthur grew older, vanity compelled him to lie about his age, as if shaving a year off would make a difference. The second is that as there was controversy about where Arthur was born, the record was clearer that by 1830, the Arthur family, which had lived in Canada at one point, was settled in at North Fairfield, Vermont where the 21st President was born.



There was also controversy surrounding Arthur's birthplace. His father had met Arthur's mother, the former Malvena Stone, in Durham, Quebec, near the Vermont border. Reverend Arthur was teaching school there at the time. Malvina Stone, was born in Berkshire, Vermont. Her parents were George Washington Stone and Judith Stevens, and her family was primarily of English and Welsh descent. Her grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Arthur's father, William Arthur, was born in Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland to a Presbyterian family. He graduated from college in Belfast and emigrated to the Province of Lower Canada (modern day Quebec) in 1819 or 1820. When Arthur ran for Vice-President in 1880, a man named Arthur Hinman would publish a book alleging that Arthur was actually born in Canada and therefore ineligible to serve as Vice-President or President. This "birther" accusation, like another one made 128 years later, would be found to be unsupported by objective facts.

Malvina Stone not only met William Arthur in Dunham, Quebec, but it was there that the two were married on April 12, 1821. They had a very brief courtship. The Arthurs moved to Vermont after the birth of their first child, Regina in 1822, moving frequently due the nature of William being a minister. He moved to where there was a congregation that wanted his ministering or where there was a teaching position for him to take. The family lived in Burlington, Jericho, and Waterville. William contemplated a change of profession and he spent a brief time studying law, but gave up that notion shortly thereafter. It was while William was still living in Waterville, that he gave up both his legal studies and his Presbyterian upbringing. He joined the Free Will Baptist Church and spent the rest of his life as a minister in that sect.

William Arthur became an outspoken abolitionist. This made him unpopular with some members of his congregations and was one of thr reasons for the family's frequent moves. In 1828, the family moved yet again, this time to Fairfield, where Chester Alan Arthur was born the following year. He was the fifth of nine children and was named "Chester" after Doctor Chester Abell, the physician and family friend who assisted in his birth. His middle name Alan was that of his paternal grandfather.

The family moved to New York State in 1839 when he found a tenured position in Union Village, New York. Five years later the family moved to Schenectady. It was then that fifteen year old Chester Alan Arthur enrolled in Union College. He studied classical Greek and Roman literature, but as his biographer Zachary Karabell puts it, "Arthur's passion for Homer, Livy and Cicero was lukewarm at best." He was an average student both in his grades and in his deportment. He graduated in 1848 at age 19.

After finishing college, Arthur taught school for several years. Then in 1854 he pursued an interest that had eluded his father: law. That year he became a law clerk at the office of lawyer Erastus Culver. One thing that the two men had in common was their passion for abolitionism, one that Arthur had inherited from his father. Culver was a strong opponent of the Fugitive Slave Act, legislation which had been passed four years previously as part of the "Compromise of 1850." The law compelled free states to turn in escaped slaves found within their borders. Arthur would earn a reputation as a very capable lawyer, successfully arguing a number of civil rights cases supporting the rights of African-Americans in his state.

In 1854 Congress had also passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, controversial legislation that purported to let those territories decide for themselves whether they wished to enter the Union as free states or slave states, but which really left them at the mercy of competing interests who wished to influence the outcome. Northern "free-soilers" fought with southern pro-slavery forces in a violent clash to achieve the outcome they desired.

In 1856, Arthur and his law partner and fellow abolitionist Henry Gardner moved to Kansas to lend support to their cause. But Arthur soon learned that the issue was not going to be resolved by debate and he was not a man of violence. He returned to New York a few months later, frustrated by what was taking place in Kansas. When he returned, he joined the newly formed Republican Party.



Following his return, Arthur met the lovely Ellen Lewis Herndon, daughter of William Lewis Herndon, a Virginia Naval Officer. He was said to be very much in love with Ellen, who he called "Nell", in spite of her southern roots, and the two were married in October of 1859 at the Calvary Episcopal Church at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-First Street in Manhattan. He bought a home at 34 West Twenty First Street near Union Square.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, it presented a challenge to this couple. Chester Alan Arthur was an ardent abolitionist and a strong supporter of newly elected President Abraham Lincoln. Ellen Arthur's family supported the Confederacy. Arthur had considered obtaining a commission as an officer in a battlefield unit, but as Zachary Karabell so adeptly puts it, "Civil War between the states was one thing; Civil War at home was another." Nell found the conflict of emotions for her husband and her family to quite stressful, while Arthur tried to address the issue with humor, calling her his "little Confederate" or his "rebel wife". To resolve the issue of how to support the Union cause while keeping the peace at home, Arthur used his connections with Governor Edwin Morgan, who appointed Arthur Chief Engineer and later Quartermaster General for the state of New York. The latter brought with it the rank of Brigadier General, and Arthur would later be referred to by Republican supporters as "General Arthur." In this role he was responsible for the logistics of feeding, housing and supplying several thousand troops. He did so by giving the work to the lowest bidders, adopting a free market oriented solution. He had a reputation for competence and efficiency.

In 1862 however, the Republicans lost the gubernatorial election, and the new Democratic Governor fired Arthur and gave his job to someone else. Arthur resumed his lucrative law practice and used the time to build his connections both in the business world and in the Republican Party. In July of 1863, the Arthur's first-born child William died at the age of two and a half, from an infection that caused an inflammation of the brain. The grief-stricken couple remained in seclusion for several months.



Morgan was returned to the Governor's mansion in 1864 and Arthur had built up a number of powerful connections including with Secretary of State William Seward, party boss Thurlow Weed, and the up-and-coming Congressman Roscoe Conkling. In 1868 when Conkling became a US Senator. A schism developed within the Republican Party between the so-called "Stalwarts" led by Conkling and the "Half-Breeds" led by James G. Blaine of Maine. Arthur showed great prowess as a fund-raiser and formed a strong alliance with Blaine that would prove to be personally lucrative for the Arthurs. It would lead to good things for Arthur, including a well paying position as the Collector of the Port of New York that would greatly increase Arthur's personal wealth. But it would also adversely affect his reputation, giving the impression that he was only in politics to line his own pockets. It was a reputation that he would show to be a mistaken one during his under-rated presidency.

Rutherford Hayes never knew his father. Rutherford Hayes Jr., husband to Hayes mother Sophia Birchard, was a Vermont shopkeeper who had moved the family to Ohio in 1817 as what was then called "the west" was beginning to open up. The Hayes family where Presbyterians who came to the United States in 1625 from Scotland to settle in Connecticut. Hayes father clerked in a store in Vermont before going into partnership with his brother-in-law Joseph Noyes to purchase a store in nearby Dummerston. In 1817, he moved his family to Ohio, where he lived in the town of Delaware and bought a farm, and invested in a distillery. In July of 1822, he died from a fever, just 10 weeks before his son, the future President, was born on October 4, 1822. Sophia Hayes never remarried and was left to care for Rutherford (known as "Rud") and his older sister Fanny. Two other siblings had died before Rud was born.



Sophia's husband had been a good businessman and left her some land and an unfinished brick house. The house was complete enough for the family to move into in 1823, though it would not be completely finished until 1828. Hayes maternal uncle Sardis Birchard, a lifelong bachelor, lived with the family and acted as a sort of father figure to young Rud. He was a banker and owned other businesses, and he helped to support the family. The farm was rented out to tenants, and those tenants are credited with giving the Hayes children colored Easter Eggs and this may have led to the tradition Hayes began as President of conducting the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt.

Rutherford Hayes was a sickly child at first, and he was cared for by his sister Fanny. The two siblings formed a strong bond that lasted throughout their lives. Hayes was enrolled at a local school run by a man known for being a stern disciplinarian who administered liberal doses of corporal punishment. In 1834 at age 12, Sophia took the children to visit her relatives in Vermont and Massachusetts and this was said to have began the love of traveling that Hayes came to have.

In 1836 Hayes changed schools, attending Ohio's Norwalk Seminary, a Methodist school. He liked the school much more than his previous one and did very well academically. The following year he transferred to Isaac Webb's school in Middletown, Connecticut, where he studied Latin, Greek and French. Webb wrote to Hayes' uncle Sardis, "Rutherford has applied himself industriously to his studies and has maintained a constant and correct deportment. I think he will avail himself of the advantage of an education and fully meet the just anticipations of his friends. He is well informed, has good sense, and is respected and esteemed by his companions. He is strictly economical and regular in his habits and has established a very favorable character among us."

In 1838, at age 16, Hayes enrolled in Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. One again he excelled at his studies and forged friendships that would lead to political connections. While at Kenyon he began keeping a diary that he kept for the rest of his life. He joined the Philomathesian Society, a literary and theatrical organization. He founded a friendship club called Phi Zeta, and honed his skills as an orator. He graduated in 1842, serving as class valedictorian.

Fanny had married William Platt, a jeweler. They lived in Columbus. Hayes planned to become a lawyer, and he began reading law with the firm of Sparrow and Matthews in Columbus. He did so while also learning to speak German. In 1843, financed by his uncle, he enrolled in Harvard Law School. Hayes enjoyed his attendance at Harvard and recalled favorably the lectures of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. The weekly routine he followed at Harvard, as recorded in his diary, was a grueling one. Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts also afforded him the opportunity to hear addresses by many famous orators including John Quincy Adams, George Bancroft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Daniel Webster. He also attended plays, including many by Shakespeare.

Hayes completed his time at Harvard in February of 1845 and was admitted to the Ohio state bar in Marietta, Ohio, but opted to practice in Lower Sandusky, later renamed Fremont. His uncle Sardis was living there. In 1847 Hayes contemplated joining the army, in the midst of the Mexican War, but he fell ill, and took a trip to New England instead. This was followed by a trip to Texas with his uncle. When he returned home, he decided to move his law practice to the burgeoning city of Cincinnati. There he joined a literary club and also gave orations himself. His law practice prospered and he was involved in the defense of two high profile murder cases, including one involving a young disabled woman who poisoned a number of her employers. Though she was convicted, Hayes received high marks for the defense he conducted. In another case he defended a woman accused of murder, running an insanity defense. His client was spared the death penalty and sent to an asylum instead.



In June of 1851, after a number of other courtships, Hayes proposed to Lucy Webb, of Chillcothe, who had moved to Cincinnati. Appearing reluctant at first, Lucy replied to Hayes profession of love for her, "I must confess, I like you very well." They were married on December 30, 1852 at Lucy's house, in the presence of 30 invited guests. Their marriage lasted for almost 37 years, until her death in June of 1889.

On June 24, 1908 (112 years ago today) Steven Grover Cleveland, who was both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States and the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 71. Cleveland ended a 16 year string of Republican Presidents by winning the presidential election of 1884 and in 1892 he won back the White House after losing it in 1888. Although he lost his bid for re-election in 1888, he still won the popular vote for president all three times that he ran for President. He and Woodrow Wilson are the only two Democrats to be elected to the presidency in the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933.



Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal Cleveland. His father was a Presbyterian minister, originally from Connecticut and his mother was from Baltimore. Grover Cleveland, the fifth of nine children. He was admitted to the New York state bar in 1859. When the Civil War broke out he hired a substitute to serve in his place, as was permissible at the time. He served as Sheriff of Erie County, Mayor of Buffalo and Governor of New York before winning his party's nomination for president.

Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His fiscal conservatism made him popular with other conservatives of the time. He won election in 1884 in spite of a scandal that alleged that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, something he never admitted to, even though he paid the child's mother to support the child. (He claimed he did this to protect his good friend Oscar Folsom, who may have been the child's father.) In spite of this, he attracted support that crossed party lines because his opponent James G. Blaine was the subject of suspected financial scandals.

During his first term in office, Cleveland married Francis Folsom, the daughter of his friend Oscar Folsom and a woman 28 years younger than him. He lost his bid for re-election in 1888 in a very close election with Benjamin Harrison, in which he won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. When the Clevelands were leaving the White House, his wife promised the staff there that they would be back. That is in fact what happened, as Cleveland won the rematch with Harrison, getting elected President in the 1892 election.

In the summer of 1893, Cleveland had surgery aboard the yacht Oneida to remove a cancerous tumor inside of his mouth. The surgery was successful but was kept from the public until after his death.

Cleveland intervened in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving. This angered labor unions. His support of the gold standard and opposition to Free Silver also alienated the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party. When his second term began, the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national depression, which Cleveland was unable to reverse. The crisis divided the Democratic Party between gold and silver supporters, and the Republicans captured the White House.

Cleveland attended the inauguration of his successor, William McKinley on March 4, 1897. Ever the gentleman, he even held McKinley's hat while the new president delivered his inaugural address. After leaving the White House, Cleveland retired to his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, and was one of the majority of trustees who preferred Dean West's plans for the Graduate School over those of Woodrow Wilson, then president of the university. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt but turned down an offer to chair the commission handling the Coal Strike of 1902. Cleveland remained vocal on some political issues. In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland criticized the women's suffrage movement, writing that "sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence."



Cleveland's health had been declining for several years, and in the autumn of 1907 he became seriously ill. On June 24, 1908, he suffered a heart attack and died. His last words were "I have tried so hard to do right." He is buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

George W. Bush was born into a family that had prospered in past generations. His great-grandfather Samuel Bush was a railroad and steel executive. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a wealthy Wall Street investment banker and US Senator from Connecticut. His father George H. W. Bush had been an oil executive, a Congressman, Ambassador, CIA Director, Vice-President and President. When George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut, his father was a 22 year old Yale undergraduate who had returned home from the second world war, after nearly losing his life when his plan was shot down by Japanese fighters over the South Pacific. A timely rescue from a submarine saved him from being a Japanese prisoner of war. His mother, the former Barbara Pierce, was a 22 year old debutante who experienced a difficult pregnancy with her first born child. It is said that the 43rd President's delivery into the world was hastened when Barbara Bush's mother-in-law suggested that she take some castor oil to help to hasten the delivery. Apparently the advice helped.



His parents called him "Georgie" and when he was two years old, his family moved to West Texas, where his father sought to make his fortune in the oil business. They first moved to Odessa, and then in 1950 the family made its home in Midland, where George W. Bush spent his formative years. Though political opponents would seek to paint him as an eastern city slicker and an Ivy League elitist, Bush proudly recalled his time as a student at Sam Houston Elementary School in Midland.

One of the most somber periods of George W. Bush's childhood was the time leading up to the death of his younger sister Robin from Leukemia in early 1953. George and Barbara Bush sought advanced medical care for Robin in New York City, while George and his baby brother Jeb were cared for by family friends. After spending seven months in New York, Robin died. When his parents returned home, they took George out of school to break the news to him. According to his mother, he was stunned by the news and repeatedly asked her "why didn't you tell me?", meaning why hadn't they told him that Robin's condition was as serious as it was.

After Robin's death, George H. W. Bush began working longer hours. Barbara Bush's hair had turned white from the stress of dealing with Robin's illness, and George W. took on the role of consoling his mother. Barbara Bush later recalled this period, telling an interviewed, "I must say, George junior saved my life." Friends recalled that he would absent himself from baseball games, telling friends that he had to go home to take care of his mother.

In his memoir, Bush wrote that he "picked up a lot of mother's personality", sharing the same sense of humor and penchant for blunt and direct speech. Bush once said "I have my father's eyes and my mother's mouth." Unlike the elder George Bush, who was driven to be a high achiever, his eldest son grew into a cocky and fun-loving teenager.

In 1959 the family moved to Houston where George H. W. Bush's oil interests were in offshore drilling operations. George W. Bush attended Kincaid, a local private school, before being shipped off to New England to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, the prominent prep school that his father had attended. He recalled that his friends in Texas saw this as some sort of punishment. Bush himself recalled being unhappy at Phillips. In one anecdote, he was asked to write an essay about a significant emotional experience, and he chose to write about Robin's death. He wrote about the tears he cried and, not wanting to repeat the use of the word "tears", he consulted a Thesaurus before writing "the lacerates ran down my cheek." He received a failing grade and was cruelly criticized by his teacher. It was also the beginning of his reputation for malapropisms.

Bush made it his goal to instill a sense of frivolity into his school experience. He made friends easily and became Andover's lead cheerleader. He organized a stickball league with registration cards that had false ages that could be used as fake IDs in local bars. His grades were not outstanding and the school dean was skeptical of his plans to apply to attend Yale. The dean underestimated the significance of the Bush family's history at the institution.

In his senior year at Yale, Bush became a member of Skull and Bones, the exclusive Yale secret society that both his grandfather and father had belonged to. Before that, he belonged to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, known as a home for athletes and parties. Bush organized the fraternity's first toga party. He had a reputation for organizing campus pranks. The theft of a Christmas wreath from a local hotel resulted in a charge of disorderly conduct that was later dropped. He was unpopular with some faculty members because of his father's support for Barry Goldwater, who had voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When his father won a seat in Congress and supported the war in Vietnam, this added to George W. Bush's unpopularity among campus liberals. For many years after, Bush harbored a grudge against what he called the "snobs" at Yale and refused to donate to college fund-raising activities.



Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 as the Vietnam War was reaching its peak. The previous spring he had taken a pilot's aptitude test with the Texas National Guard and enlisted in the Guard's 147th Fighter Group. Members of the guard were exempt from assignment to Vietnam unless they volunteered. Other members of the guard at the time included the sons of Governor John Connolly, Senator John Tower and Representative Lloyd Bensen, as well as seven members of the Dallas Cowboys. Bush's admission into the National Guard would become an issue in his subsequent presidential campaign when he ran against Al Gore, who had served in Vietnam.

Dr. George Tryon Harding (known by his second name) was not yet Dr. Harding when in the winter of 1864 he returned home to Blooming Grove, Ohio from the war. Harding was born in Blooming Grove, the third of ten children. Only he and five of his sisters would live to adulthood. His father was successful farmer who was able to afford to send his son to school. Tryon Harding graduated in 1860 with a bachelor's degree, and then began teaching at a small school just outside of Mount Gilead, Ohio. But in 1863, the 20 year old Harding enlisted in the Union Army as a fifer in the 96th Ohio Infantry. However, he caught pleurisy soon afterward, and received a medical discharge a few weeks later without ever having left Ohio. After convalescing at his parents' home and recovering, Harding re-enlisted as a drummer. His unit shipped out to Virginia in May 1864, where he was stationed at Fort Williams. Perhaps his fondest memory of the war was when, while on a furlough, he and two of his friends visited the White House in Washington, D.C., where they met with President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln shook their hands. In August 1864, Harding was again taken ill, this time with typhoid fever. He received a second medical discharge two weeks later.



Once again Tryon Harding went home to Blooming Grove to recover, this time to be with his new wife, the former Phoebe Dickerson. They had gotten married on May 7, 1864. They had became secretly engaged and had eloped just before Harding was due to ship off to Virginia, marrying in Galion, Ohio, at the home of the local Methodist minister. Phoebe's parents did not learn of their marriage until Harding returned from the war.

On November 2, 1865, the couple welcomed their first child into the world, a son that Tryon named Warren Gamaliel, overruling his wife's preferred name of Winfield. Warren was Tryon's grandmother's maiden name and Gamaliel was the name of a favorite uncle. Warren would be the oldest of eight children, two of whom would not survive their infancy. His parents called him "Winnie", a consolation to his mother's preferred baby name.

The young family moved into a small house on the Harding property. "Winnie" was a bright child who was taught by his mother to read by the time he was four years old. She taught Sunday School and used some of the word cards as teaching aids for her own son. Young Warren is described as being "a born talker", Phoebe told her son that he would someday become President of the United States. From his father Warren inherited musical talent and learned to play the coronet by age nine.

Both Tryon and Phoebe Harding studied homeopathic medicine. At that time, one became a medical doctor by studying under a practicing physician before attending medical school. Tryon obtained his license to practice medicine first and Phoebe commenced her studies a few years later, also serving as a midwife. They maintained the family farm, with much of the labor coming from their oldest son.

In 1876 Tryon invested in the purchase of a local newspaper, the Caledonia Argus. Eleven year old Warren was apprenticed as a printer's devil, and Warren honed his typing skills. At the same time, Warren was doing well in school, despite not having a lot of time to study because of his work at the newspaper and on the farm. His teachers reported that he was "naturally smart".

In 1879 at age 14, Warren Harding enrolled at Ohio Central College in Iberia, Ohio. To supplement the cost of his school, he painted houses and barns and worked in railroad construction in the summers. He was said to be a hard worker with a good worth ethic. In college he got his best marks in literature and philosophy. In his last year at college he and his friend Frank Harris began a college newspaper called the Iberia Spectator. It was in college that he also earned a reputation as a ladies man, but was also a devoted son, visiting his mother every Sunday to bring her flowers.

In Harding's last year in college his family moved to Marion, Ohio, and in 1882 he rejoined his family following his graduation. The Hardings' medical practice prospered and the family bought a large house in the center of town. Warren taught school at a one room school house, but quickly realized that teaching was not to be his preferred career. He considered a career in law, but found reading law to be boring. He sold insurance while also starting up a local town band. When the Marion Star, a daily newspaper, was about to be auctioned off at a Sheriff's sale, he and his friend Jack Warwick purchased the paper, with help from his father, who cosigned a loan. One of the paper's assets was an unlimited railroad pass, and this allowed Harding to travel to Chicago in 1884 to attend the Republican Party's nominating convention. There he made valuable connections, not only with fellow press people, but also meeting New York State Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt, and the winning candidate James G. Blaine.



Warren Harding had been bitten by the political bug. In the years to come, he would make the transition from newspaperman to politician and elected official, serving as a state senator, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, a US Senator from Ohio, and finally President of the United States.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on August 27, 1908 on a farm located on the banks of the Pedernales River, somewhere between Hye and Stonewall, Texas. The area was so remote that even in an age of rail traffic, no train tracks connected the two communities. The nearest city of any size was Austin, some 60 miles away on today's highways. His parents were Samuel Ealy Johnson, known as Mister Sam, and Rebekah Baines Johnson. He was the eldest of five children. Johnson had one brother, Sam Houston Johnson, and three sisters, Rebekah, Josefa, and Lucia.



Politics ran in his veins as his father had finishing his second term in office in the Texas State Legislature when LBJ came into the world. His mother was a graduate of Baylor University, at a time when this was exceedingly rate for women, let alone a farm wife. Johnson was proud of his pedigree and he would later claim, "My ancestors were teachers and lawyers and college presidents and governors when the Kennedys in this country were still tending bar." One of those ancestors had even died at the Alamo, according to LBJ.

One of Johnson's earliest memories of his father was the time he gave him a haircut. Johnson said, "When I was four or five I had long curls. He hated them. 'He's a boy,' he'd say to my mother, 'and you're making a sissy of him. You've got to cut those curls.' My mother refused. Then one Sunday morning when she went off to church, he took the big scissors and cut off all my hair. When my mother came home, she refused to speak to him for a week."

This pattern continued as Johnson's father ended the violin lessons that Rebekah had put him in. Eight year old LBJ was okay with this, but as he recalled, "For days after I quit those lessons, she walked around the house pretending I was dead." Some of Johnson's biographers have speculated that Johnson was affected by his mother's tendency to give and withdraw approval, and that it was a train that Johnson himself would demonstrate as an adult, later demonstrating what some called "the Johnson freeze-out." According to Johnston staffer George Reedy, who had known Mrs. Johnson, she was a tough, stern and obstinate woman. Reedy said, "She was an unrelenting snob who reminded everyone in the first few minutes of a meeting that her ancestry included high ranking Baptist clerics and intellectuals."



When LBJ was ten, his father was once again elected to the Texas State Legislature after a nine year absence. Young Lyndon Johnson would accompany his father to the state house in Austin watching the debates and observing the political horse trading that his father engaged in. He accompanied his father campaigning out of a Model T and loved to watch Sam Johnson work his magic on his constituents and potential voters. According to LBJ, Samuel Johnson was quite progressive, taking on the KKK who supported his opponent. Sam Johnson was not perfect however and was said to have problems with alcohol, something that caused tension in his marriage. Rebekah was influenced by the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, with the Johnson children caught in the middle of this conflict.

After Lyndon Johnson finished high school at nearby Johnson City (named for another relative), his mother wanted him to go to college, but he wanted to go to California with some friends. He did head out west for sixteen months, but after a series of dead-end odd jobs, he returned home to take a job in road construction. After that he followed his mother's wishes by enrolling in Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos, Texas. The school had low tuition and attracted students from less affluent homes. He made extra money by running errands for the school president Cecil Evans. He was also the summer editor of the school newspaper. While in college he dated Carole Davis, the daughter of a prosperous businessman, and a strong KKK member. The couple broke up, but not until they had attended the 1928 Democratic National Convention together in Houston. Johnson used his status as editor of the school paper to score a press pass and get on the convention floor.

Johnson spent his senior year teaching at the small town of Cotulla, a small Texas community that was primarily populated by Mexican-Americans who were subject to segregation policies. Johnson's students lived in poverty, and he later remarked that he once saw some of his students "going through a garbage pile, shaking the coffee grounds from grapefruit rinds and sucking the rinds for the juice." He had 28 students ranging from grades 5 through 8, many of whom were barely literate. Johnson was said to have demonstrated a good work ethic at the school, arriving early, leaving late, and working on extracurricular activities for the students. He organized a band, a debate club, a baseball team and a choir. He claimed that he spent his first paycheck buying second-hand musical instruments and song books for the choir. Reports from his students describe him as a very dedicated and very popular teacher. The school superintendent called Johnson "one of the best men I've ever known."

Johnson would later cite his experience working with these poverty-stricken children as a motivating factor in his War on Poverty that he later launched as President. When he returned to San Marcos in 1965, after signing the Higher Education Act of 1965, Johnson said, "You never forget what poverty and hatred could do, when you see the scars on the face of a hopeful young child. They never seem to know why people dislike them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes. I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American."

As I write this entry, I am about halfway through Tim McGrath's new doorstop of a biography called James Monroe: A Life, which I am enjoying thoroughly. Monroe has always been one of my favorite Presidents, a man who seemed capable of any job given to him (and he had a lot of them), but always overshadowed by others such as Washington, Jefferson or Madison.



Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in his parents house in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His paternal great-great-grandfather was Patrick Andrew Monroe, a man who emigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century. He was part of an ancient Scottish clan known as Clan Munro. In 1650 he obtained a large tract of land in Washington Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia. Spence Monroe was a farmer and also a carpenter. Monroe's mother was the daughter of James Jones, who immigrated from Wales and settled in nearby King George County, Virginia. Jones was a wealthy architect. James was the second of five children in the family, and the oldest son.

Spence Monroe was among a group of local farmers who signed a pledge in 1766 against the purchase and consumption of imports from England until the hated Stamp Act tax was repealed. At the time, James Monroe's maternal uncle, James Jones, was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and a Judge, and he was someone who would have a tremendous influence on the future president. Jones was on the committee that drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights as well as the Virginia Constitution and Jones would also be a member of the Continental Congress. Patriotism ran deep in James Monroe's bloodline. Judge Jones was also a friend of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He would become Monroe's patron, his advisor and a strong influence on him for the remainder of his life, on both personal and political matters.

At age 11, James Monroe enrolled in Campbelltown Academy, a school run by Parson Campbell. He was only able to attend school for eleven weeks of the year as his help was needed on his father's farm, but while at this school he forged a friendship with John Marshall. The two would enroll in William and Mary College in 1774 and they would also serve together in the Revolutionary War.

Monroe's mother died in 1772, and his father two years later. He inherited property from both of his parents, but at age 16, Monroe had to withdraw from school to support his younger brothers. Joseph Jones became a surrogate father to Monroe and his siblings. It was Jones who took Monroe to the capital of Williamsburg, Virginia, and enrolled him in the College of William and Mary, helping with financial support for the family while James was at College. Jones also introduced Monroe to important Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington.

In 1774, as opposition to the British government grew in the colonies, Virginia sent a delegation to the First Continental Congress. Still a student at William and Mary, Monroe became involved in the acts of opposition to Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor of Virginia, and took part in the storming of the Governor's Palace.

On May 15, 1776, Virginia issued its own "Declaration of Independence" and shortly thereafter, about a year and a half after his enrollment at William and Mary, James Monroe dropped out of college and joined the 3rd Virginia Regiment in the Continental Army. Literacy was a valuable skill in the new army and Monroe was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant, serving under Captain William Washington, a second cousin to the Commander of the Army. After months of training, Monroe and 700 Virginia infantrymen were sent to join the Continental Army in the New York and New Jersey campaign.

Shortly after the Virginians arrived, George Washington led the army in a retreat from New York City into New Jersey and then across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. In a famous but historically inaccurate painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware painted by Emanuel Luetze in 1851, James Monroe is portrayed as holding the flag on the boat that Washington was standing in. In truth, the two crossed on different boats and it is unlikely that anyone stood up in the boat.

In late December, Monroe took part in a surprise attack on a Hessian encampment at the Battle of Trenton. The attack was a success, but Monroe was shot in the shoulder, suffered a severed artery in the battle and nearly died. It was a fortuitous encounter with a local surgeon Dr. John Riker, who came along to provide directions, that saved Monroe's life. In the aftermath, Washington cited Monroe and William Washington for their bravery, and promoted Monroe to captain. Another famous painting by John Trumbull, The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776, shows a wounded Monroe in the picture.



After his wounds healed, Monroe returned to Virginia to recruit his own company of soldiers. But he found few followers, largely due to his lack of wealth to induce soldiers to join his company. Monroe then asked his uncle to use his influence to help to return him to the front. Monroe was assigned to the staff of General William Alexander, Lord Stirling. It was during this time he formed a close friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer, and their lives would intersect many years later when Monroe was Ambassador to France during Washington's presidency, and Lafayette's wife Adrienne was a prisoner of the French Revolution whose release Monroe helped to secure.

Monroe served in the Philadelphia campaign and spent the winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, sharing a log hut with John Marshall. He saw action in the Battle of Monmouth. Monroe resigned his commission in December 1778 and joined his uncle in Philadelphia. After the British captured Savannah, the Virginia legislature decided to raise four regiments, and Monroe returned to his native state, hoping to receive his own command. He was armed with letters of recommendation from Washington, Stirling, and Alexander Hamilton. Monroe received a commission as a lieutenant colonel and was expected to lead one of the regiments, but was once again unsuccessful at recruitment. Instead, on the advice of his uncle, Monroe returned to Williamsburg to study law, where he was taken under the wing of Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson.

The Virginians moved the capital from Williamsburg to the more defensible city of Richmond. Monroe accompanied Jefferson to the new capital where Governor Jefferson held command over its militia. He made Monroe a colonel and in this capacity, Monroe established a messenger network to coordinate with the Continental Army and other state militias. But he was still unable to raise an army due to a lack of interested recruits. Monroe was unable to serve during the Yorktown campaign.



Monroe resumed studying law under Jefferson and continued until 1783. Monroe was admitted to the Virginia bar and practiced in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was able to make a number of valuable political connections that would help pave his path to the presidency.