The New York herald., 1872-07-12
the Rejected Candidates for It's Occu-
patton.

patton.
The White House of which we are speaking
Is that white house at Washington officially
styled the Executive Mansion. It is the house
built and furnished by the people of the United
States for their President, who holds it free of
rent. 1t is constructed upon that good old
standard of national dignity and republican
simplicity which prevailed among this people
down to the year 1900, and thence down,
we may say to the discovery of gold in Cali
fornia. 1t is large, plain, substantial struc-
ture of rough sandstone, coated with white
lead, or, in the vernacular, whitewashed, and
it gets new whitewashing with every new
President 1t has one front door and several
back doors, which indicate that while there
is only one way to get in there are several ways
to get out. To the aspiring politician this is
the house that Jack built, full of malt; the en-
chanted castle, the loveliest of all the castles
in Spain, the Alhambra, q fairy palace of per-
petual delights; and yet its occupant suffers
the tortures of Samson, who ''did grind in the
prison house.
That excellent and accomplished woman,
occupant of this White House, A. D. 1900, in
q gossipy letter about Washington when it was
q struggling hamlet in swamp, describes the
new Executive Mansion substantially as an old
barn-dismal windy, damp and cold-and she
humorously recounts her difficulties in getting
wood sufficient to keep her apartments COM
fortably warm. The hostile British in 1914, in
their occupation of Washington, were so much
displeased with this house that they set fire to
it and burned it out; but, as the shell remained
intact, it was soon reconstructed. After her
return that universal favorite, 'Dolly Madi-
son." the handsomest and dearest little Dolly
Warden of them all, never wearied in telling
the amusing adventures Of her fight from the
British over the river into the woods of Vir-
ginia. And this reminds us that Dickens in his
american Notes, describes the President S
residence as having much the look Of o Lon
don club house. "Poor Pierce" found that to
the unacclimated New Englander it was q
house of fever and ague; and poor "Old
Buck" towards the close of his melancholy
servile occupation, pronounced it as but little
better than free hotel or almshouse for
hungry ofice-beggars.
And yet to our aspiring politicians, from
the time of the elder Adams to this day, this
White House has been a sort of earthly Para
disc, cheaply reached at any cost And to
detail the schemes and schemers, the plots and
counterplots and struggles of the various party
leaders and parties for the possession of this
White House since 1900, would be to write out
the history of the United States for the last
seventy-two years. The lucky occupants of
this fairy castle, embalmed for posterity as
Presidents of the United States, have been
John Adams, jefferson, Madison, Monroe,
John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren,,
Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore,
Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln and Johnson, and
the present holder of the establishment is u
S. Grant.
Van Buren was lucky in getting under the
wing Of "Old Hickory" who carried him in
as the rightful heir to the White House; but
in aiming to secure a second term as his next
right in the order of succession Van Buren, for
twelve years kept himself and the democratic
party in hot water, and then he had to give it
up as bad job. Poor old General Harrison
in this White House was bounded to death
within month by hisSYavenous office-seekers,
and Tyler, thus becoming President, made
himself conspicuous to no purpose as candi-
date for another term on his own account.
Polk, taken up at a venture by the democrats
because he had not been fishing for the nomi-
nation, turned out very we'll, only he, too,
wanted another term His party leaders, how
ever, wanted another chance each for them
selves, and so they ruled him out Tay-
lor, like Harrison, in this enchanted
castle, after short occupation, was
worried to death by his hungry friends; and
Fillmore succeeded him, d la Tyler, only to
play the same profitless role of scheming for
another term and with substantially the same
result. Pierce, getting in after the fashion of
Polk from surprise nomination, spoiled
everything for himself and the democrats in
his desperate pro-slavery game for another
term Buchanan, hedging, ditching, delving
and scheming for thirty years to get into this
White House, was glad, after four years oc-
cupation, to get out again. He, at least in
the hands of his Southern masters, had enough
of it with one term and frightened, bewil-
dered and chapfallen, he retired to Wheatland,
thankful for the good fortune accorded him OF
dying a natural death. Lincoln, having en-
tered upon his second term, was murdered by
q rebel assassin when the great martyr in the
Union cause was just beginning to feel easy
and confident from the subjugation of the re-
belion. Johnson, succeeding as President,
repeated, but on a grander scale, the extrava-
ganza of Tyler and Fillmore for another term.
Grant, enthusiastically renominated for On.
other trial, has strong party at his back, but
hard fight before him.