McCook weekly tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 188?-1886, 1885-01-29
PRESIDENTIAL POVERTY.
Few Of Our Executives Who Have Left For.
tunes Behind Them.

service, writes correspondent to
The Cleveland Leader, retired to his
little estate near Quincy, Mass, with
barely enough property to give him
the needs of life on a farm and the
only thing he got from the United
States.during his later years was the
privilege of receiving and sending his
letters without postage.
Thomas Jefferson had to borrow
something less than $4,000 of Rich
mond bank to pay his debts before he
left the white house, and the history
of the last seventeen years OF his life
is one of almost continuous financial
embarrassment. During the forty-four
years which he devoted to the service
of his country his property dwindled
and his estates became involved. In
asking for the above loan he says:
"My nights will be almost sleepless.
as nothing would be more distressing
to me than to have debts here Tin
Washington unpaid, if, indeed,
should be allowed to depart with them
unpaid of which l am by no means GER
tain"
He obtained the loan, but he went
from Washington still owing 500, 900,
and few years later he was forced to
sell his library, which he had been
sixty years in gathering to relieve his
necessities. Congress, parsimonious
then as now, valued it at half Its cost,
and gave HIM $4,000 for what was
worth $4,000. In 1919 and 1920 there
were hard times in this country, and
Jefferson, now a man of ~, lost $780,
600 by indorsing for a friend, and he
tried to relieve himself by selling some
of his lands. But times were bad and
there were no purchasers. Land
would not bring more than one-third
of its value, and at the request of the
old ex-president the Virginia legisla-
ture passed an act permitting him to
dispose of Monticello by lottery.
This fact was noised about over the
country, and so many subscriptions
came to his relief that the idea was
given up. New York raised $500,
Philadelphia sent $4,000, Baltimore
$4,000, and Jefferson, it is said. re-
ceived these moneys proudly, saying:
mo cent of this was wrung from the
taxpayer. 1t is the pure, unsolicited
offering of love-" He died at SO, be-
lieving that his estate would support
his children. He was mistaken. Con-
tinued hard times caused increased
depression, and the mansion and the
estate merely paid the debts which
hung over them. Martha Jefferson,
his daug liter, lost her home and pre-
pared to teach school, but the legisla-
lures of South Carolina and Louisiana
each voted her $4,000, and this en-
abled her to die in comfort. Jetfer-
sons only surviving granddaughter,
Mrs. Mickleham, lives in poverty in
Georgetown, and congress has refused
to aid her.
l have before me newspaper of
1926. published just one month after
Jefferson's death. 1t contains an adj
vertisement of the sale of Monticello
by lottery in 1920, and represents it
as valued at 81, ZOO. Shadwell Mills,
another estate of Jefferson, is valued
at $4,000, and the Albemarle estate
at SI1,5OO, making total of three
prizes worth SIP, 500. The tickets are
$40 each, and there are II, AT blanks.
President Madison left some proper
ty at the time of his death, but his
widow, the peerless Dolly, was for a
time dependent upon the bread and
meat furnished her by an old negro
servant. and her last days were made
easy only by congress buying from her
for $4,000 the manusc: ipt notes of
the debates of the constitutional con-
vention, which Madison had taken.
President Monroe, though he declin-
ed, it is said, 1858, 900 from the gov
eminent for his public services, died
very poor in New York, and it was
twenty-seven years before his body
was removed to Richmond, Va.
John Quincy Adams must have re-
ceived over 100000 in government
salaries, and heis one of the few presi-
dents who again took up public life
after he had left the white house. He
remained in retirement only about a
year, and then entered the lower house
of congress. After about sixteen
wears of service there, he died in the
capital in 184S, exclaiming: ''This is
the end of earth: am content. John
Quincy Adams accumulated property,
and the home in which he lived in
Washington is now worth at least
$4,000, and was until few years ago
in the hands of his defendants. His
family is wealthy, and Charles Francis
Adams is railroad nabob.
Andrew Jackson gained nothing in
wealth from his white house salary.
1t cost him, he says, every cent of it
to pay his expenses, and the most of
the proceeds of his cotton crop in adj
dition. He returned from Washing
ton at the close of his second term
with just $50 in his pocket, to find his
farm going to ruin and himself so
deeply in debt that he had to sell
part of his land to get out. The panic
of 1887 did not affect him, but in 1912
he became involved through the debts
of his adopted son, and he had to
borrow $4,000 from Frank Blair.
Congress relieved him somewhat dur
ing his later years by refunding the fine
of 81, 900 which he had paid in New Or
leans in 1915, and this with the interest
amounted in 1S43, think, to $1,000.
Still, at the time of Jackson's death
he owed more than SIG, 600, and now
his heirs hold only a life estate in the
Hermitage by an act of the Tennessee
legislature.
Martin Van Buren, retired from the