Him tine Greatest Republic

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20168, 9 June 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

Him tine Greatest Republic

America’s First Citizens

fjpHE task of electing a President of the United States, which occurs every four years, is a protracted one. For weeks past the two great political parties—the Democrats and the Republicans—have been engaged in selecting their candidates for the Presidency by a process of elimination, and the final selection of each party’s candidate has still to be made at a convention of party delegates representing the various States. The actual election of the President by the people will not take place until November next, and the new President will not be sworn in at White House, Washington, until March, 1929. During the 152 years that have elapsed since the Declaration of Independence was passed by Congress on July 4, 1776, there have been 30 Presidents of the United States, of whom eleven have had a second term of office. The youngest President was Theodore. Roosevelt, who was 42 when, as Vice-President, he automatically assumed control at White House after the assassination of President William McKinley in September, 1901. The oldest President was William H. Harrison, whose term of office was the shortest. He was 68 when ejected in 1841, and he died exactly one month after being sworn in.

Most of the Presidents have been in the fifties when elected. Cavin Coolidge, the present occupant of the Presidential chair, was 51 when, as Vice-President, he became head of the Executive at White House on the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Air Harding was 55 when elected President three years previously. Wood row Wilson was 56 when first elected in 1912. Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became President; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were each 57. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. The Declaration of Independence was drawn up by a committee of five members of the second Congress, of whom two —John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—subsequently became President. There was by no means a unanimous desire, on the part of the thirteen States of the Union to proclaim independence from Great Britain, and the representatives of some of the States, under instructions from their Governments, kept changing their minds on the question. It seems strange to modern ideas that any public men could contemplate their States remaining part of the Empire after a rebellion against Great Britain, but the explanation is that some of the States were not materially affected at. the time by the. war which Great Britain was waging in endeavouring to suppress the rebellion. Eventually, after three days of debate, the Declaration of Independence was carried by Congress on July 4, 1776. The day was warm, and members were wearied by the heat and the Jong debate. Jefferson, who was chairman of the committee appointed to draft the declaration, used to say that the irritation caused to members by the heat and by a swarm of flies from a neighboring stable was responsible to a large extent for the Declaration being carried. The wording of the Declaration is practically the sole work of Jefferson, who was a very able man, with a gift for composition, and a profound knowledge of British law. The task of writing the draft of the Declaration was entrusted to him by the other members of the committee, and the little desk on which he wrote it is Still preserved. Congress made many alterations in the draft, but these alterations were mainly omissions of cJauses, not changes in the wording of those that remain. A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, another member of the committee appointed by Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence, figure in one of the most remarkable coincidences in history. Adams defeated Jefferson for the Presidency in 1797, after George Washington had refused to accept a third term, but Adams, to his great annoyance, failed to secure election for a second term in 1801. His rival, Jefferson, was elected, and Adams, who was an 'extremely vain man, was so angry at being evicted, that before daylight on the morning of March 4/ when the new President was to be inaugurated, he ordered his coach and drove away, instead of waiting to welcome his rival, the new President. The coincidence in which he was associated with Jefferson, concerns the jubilee of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1826. They were the only survivors of the 55 members of Congress who had signed the Declaration. Jefferson was then 83 vfears of age, and Adams was 90. They had long before healed their quarrel, and had conducted a friendly correspondence. It was arranged by those who were in charge of the celebrations in connection with the jubilee of the Declaration, to bring both Adams and Jefferson to Washington to take part in these celebrations. But both were sick unto death, and they did not meet. Adams died at sunset on Independence day, and his last words were “Jefferson still lives.” But Jefferson had died a few hours earlier. Both these former Presidents of the United States died on the Jubilee of the momentous Declaration they had helped to draw up. AN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. A year before John Adams died he had the felicity of seeing his son, John Quincy Adams, elected President of the United States. Theirs is the only case of father and son filling the Presidency, but Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President, was grandson of William 11. Harrison, who. as already stated, was President for a month prior to his death in 1841. John Quincy Adams was a man of finer fibre than the father, and resolutely set his face against the policy of “the spoils to the victor,” i.e., of dismissing thousands of Government officials appointed by the previous administration and appointing his supporters to the vacancies. But he is known in American history as the man who almost destroyed (in a limited sense) the Declaration of Independence that his father had helped to pass through Congress. As has already boon stated, the Declaration was passed on July 4, 1776, but this document, which was

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printed and distributed throughout the country, was signed only by the President of Congress, and the Secretary. But a resolution was carried by Congress ordering the Declaration to be engrossed on parchment. This parchment document was signed on 2, 1’”6,. by the 53 members of Congress who were present, and subsequently by others who had been absent. After all those who had signed the document had died, John Quincy Adams, who was president, thought it would be an excellent idea to have facsimile copies made and presented to the descendants of the signatories. A facsimile was made on a copper plate, so that copies could be printed from it. But the wet sheet placed on the face of the document in order to obtain an impression to be engraved on the copper plate drew out the ink to such an extent that the text and the signatures became illegible, and almost invisible. The damaged document was carefully placed among the archives of the State in order to preserve it from further harm, and it was produced for inspection only on very important occasions. But in the course of time the paper began to decay, and in 1894 the Declaration was sealed up in a steel case in order to preserve it by excluding light and air. PRESIDENTS ASSASSINATED. Ofo the thirty Presidents of the United Statese thro died from natural causes during their terms of office, and three were assassinated. The victims of assassination were Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. Lincoln was shot while attending a performance of the ploy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865. He was occupying a box with his wife, Major Henry Rathbone and Miss Harris, the daughter of a senator. An actor named James Wilkes Booth, the son of a famous tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth, who had won fame on the stage of England and America, crept into the box and shot the President, and also stabbed Major Rathbone. The assassination was the outcome of a conspiracy among supporters of the Confederate States. Amid the excitement caused by the shot Booth leaped from the President's box to the stage, brandishing in his hand the blood-stained knife with which he had stabbed Major Rathbone, and shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis—the South is avenged!” Sic semper tyrannis (so always to tyrants) was the motto of the southern State of Virginia. Lincoln was removed to White House, and died at 7 a.m. thfl following day. His assassin, who was supposed to have broken a leg when leaping from the box to the stage, made his way to the back of the theatre, where he jumped on a horse that had been provided by his fellow-conspirators, and made his escape. A hunt was organised, and the Government offered a reward of £lO,OOO for his capture, and £5OO for the capture of a youthful confederate, Daniel Herold, aged 23, who was knowji to have accompanied him in his flight. Twelve days later troops surrounded a barn in which Booth and Herold were hiding. Booth was shot dead and Herold was taken alive. Subsequently Herold and four other conspirators, including a woman, Mrs Mary Surratt, were banged. DID THE ASSASSIN ESCAPE? For many years there were persistent statements that the man killed in the barn was not Booth, but that he escaped and lived for »Ainy years, a haunted existence, under different names, and finally poisoned himself. Numerous books have been written in America to prove that he escaped, and in some cases the story has been supported by sworn documentary testimony on the part of persons w r ho claim to possess material evidence. The secrecy maintained regarding the disposal of Booth’s body by the authorities, which was not formally identified, helped to strengthen the legend (which survives in America to-day) that t? e man killed in the barn was not Booth. The 8. tcretary for War gave instructions to Colonel Baker to dispose of the body. Secrecy was regarded as essential, for, on the one hand, it was feared that the feeling aroused in the North by the murder of Lincoln might result in the body being exhumed and maltreated, and, on the other hand, it was thought that if Southern sympathisers could obtain possession of the body, they would bury it with stately honors, as that of a patriotic martyr! It is supposed that Colonel Baker placed the body in a bag and sank it in the river Potomac, which flows through Washington, but no authentic evidence on the point has ever been made public. TWO OTHER VICTIMS. The second President to meet death at the hands of an assassin was General James A. Garfield, who was .elected president in November, 1880. Nine months later, while passing through the waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac railway station at Washington on the arm of his friend, Mr James G. Claine, Secretary of State, a lawyer named Charles Jules Guitcau, fired two shot at the President. The first shot passed through his coat sleeve, and the second entered his back. He was carried back to White House, and lingered between life and death for eleven weeks. He put up a gallant fight for life, but bJood poisoning set in, and he deid on September 19.

Guiteau was a disappointed office seeker; it was said that he wanted the post of American consul at Marseilles, but that it had been refused. He was indicted for murder after the President’s death, and, after a sensational trial, in which the defence relied on the plea of insanity, he was found guilty, and hanged.

William McKinley, the third President to fall a victim to assassination, was shot by an anarchist of Polish descent, named Leon Czolgosz while holding a reception at the Pan-American Exposition at BuffaJo, on September 6, 1901. He lingered for eight days after being shot. No time was lost in placing Czolgosz in the dock and he was executed twelve days after the President’s death.