DEATH IN OFFICE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25177, 14 April 1945, Page 9

DEATH IN OFFICE

FATE OF PRESIDENTS SIX PREVIOUS EXAMPLES three by assassination The 33rd President of the United States, Mr Harry Truman, is the seventh Vice-President in the history of America whose elevation to the highest post in the land resulted from the death of a President during his term of office. Four of these Presidents died from natural causes, and three were assassinated. It is noteworthy that only in two cases, those of Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, wns a VicePresident later elected to the Presidency, after serving for the remainder of his predecessor's term. William H. Harrison, the ninth President of the United States, a Whig, of English descent, died of pneumonia only one month after his election in 1841. His successor, John Tyler, who had been chosen Vice-President at the same election, served as president until the next election in 1845, when he was succeeded by a Democrat, James K. Polk. Shooting of Abraham Lincoln Another short-term as President was served by Zaehary Taylor, a Whig, who was elected to the Presidency from Louisiana in 18-19. Only four months after assuming office, he died at the White House. He was succeeded by the then Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, another Whig, who served out the remainder of the term as President, but was succeeded at the next; election in 1853 by a Democrat, Franklin Pierce. More tragic was the sensational end to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 18(31 and re-elected for a second term in 1865. It is a coincidence that exactly 80 years ago today, President Lincoln was shot 'while attending a performance of the play, "Our American Cousin," in Ford's Theatre. Washington, bv an actor, John Wilkes Booth. It was on Good Friday that Lincoln was shot, and he died on the next day, April 15, 1865. Lincoln's assassin was shot to death by a sergeant of the American Army 11 days after Lincoln's death, and for participation in the crime four others, including a woman, were hanged after trial. The original plot was to assassinate the President. Vice-President and certain members of the Cabinet, and although one of the conspirators attacked the Secretary of State in his bedroom with a knife, the wound was not serious. Assassin at Railway Depot

The successor to Lincoln was a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, who Lincoln himself appointed in 1862 as military Governor of Tennessee. He was elected to the Senate in 1857, and became VicePresident in 1865, when Lincoln was reelected. He served the balance of Lincoln's second term, which had just commenced. but at the following election in--1869, the Presidency went to Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican. ' The next President who was fated to be killed in office was James A. Garfield, a Republican from Ohio. After serving as a major-general in the Union Armv in the Civil War. he was elected to the House of Representatives, and later to the Senate. About six months after his election to the Presidency in 1881, he was fatally shot at a railway depot at Washington. His assassin was later convicted of murder and hanged. On the death of Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, a Republican, assumed the Presidency until the next election in 188/5. when the office went to Grover Cleveland, a Democrat. The third United States President to meet his death by the hand of an assessin was William McKinley, a Republican. who assumed office in 1897. and was re-elected in 1901. In September of that year he was assassinated bv an anarchist, who shot him twice with a pistol hidden in a handkerchief, while lie was attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. He died eight days later, and his murderer was electrocuted. Theodore Roosevelt's Election

Successor to McKinley was Theodore Roosevelt, who served the remainder of McKinley's term, but, contrary to precedent, was re-elected President in 1905. At the completion of his second term, he hunted in East Africa, but returned to the political arena in 1913. when he was defeated for President by Woodrow Wilson.

Still fresh in the memory of many, was the death in office in 1923 of Warren G. Harding, who entered the Senate in 1915. and was elected President in 1921. His death came from natural causes, and he was followed by Calvin Coolidge. who had been elected VicePresident in 1921. He succeeded in being re-elected for a full term in 1925. LIST OF PRESIDENTS MANY NOTABLE NAMES A complete list of the Presidents of the United States and the years they served is as follows: —Washington Jefferson (1801-09), Madison (1809-17), Monroe (1817-25), J. Q. Adams (182529), Jackson (1829-37), Van Buren (1837-41), W. H. Harrison (March, 1841-April, 1.841), Tvler (1841-45), Polk (1845-49), Taylor (1849-50), Fillmore (1850-53), Pierce (1853-57), Buchanan (1857-61), Lincoln (1861-65), Johnson (1865-69), Grant (1869-77), Haves (1877-81), Garfield (March, 1881-Sep-tember, 1881), Arthur (1881-85), Cleveland (1885-89), Harrison (1889-93), Cleveland (1893-97), McKinley (18971901), T. Roosevelt (1901-09), Taft (1909-13), Wilson , (1913-21), Harding (1921 -23), Coolidge ( 1923-29), Hoover (1929-33), F. D. Roosevelt (1933-45). Although only 32 persons, including Mr. Truman, have held the office of President, Air Truman officially is the 33rd President. The Government numbers its Chief Executives according to the different persons who have held office, and ignores the number of successive terms served by any one man. There is one exception, however, and Grover Cleveland is listed officially as two different Presidents, the 22nd and 24th, his two terms at the White House being separated by the four-year term of Benjamin Harrison.