Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-04-14
Fiue Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents

BY JAMES MORGAN.

This critics succeeded only in magnify
ing them. BY sneering at him as a
man more fitted to adorn a log cabin
than the White House they gave him
a popular symbol for his candidacy
and a him the representative OF
the primitive West.
The first popular resentment for the
Sights placed upon this frontier Cen
eral after the War of 1912 resulted In
his election to Congress from Ohio,
which State afterward sent him to the
SENATE. But he cut a mail figure in
EITHER House. Although President
John Quincy Adams made a wry face
at him as "a political adventurer" of
shallow mind" whose thirst for
Lucrative office is absolutely rabid," he
appointed him Minister to Colombia.
but the incoming Jackson Administra-
ton promptly recalled him from his
remote post at Bogota.
Rigfdly barred from Federal Office
thenceforth throughout the long
Jacksonian era; h~onorably poor and
without a profession; unable to make
a living merely by farming. his estate
lat North Bend, on the Ohio. "a little
way below Cincinnati, Harrison tried
for awhile to exc out an income by
running a whiskey distillery on this
place. But he reformed and became
clerk of the Hamilton County Court.
From that modest post to the Presi-
dency is a long stretch, II he took
lit at a single step. 1t is the longest
stride forward In the records of poll
tics.
Jackson had blazed o new trafl to
1.-THE White House, and Harrison was
tho second to tread it. In the first
40 years men became President only
after serving a regular apprentice
ship. jackson rudely brok chat or
der of succession, and we since have
u y nnlx thuna VnGiHnnfG-An
Buren,, Buchanan and Taft-who had
any experience in high executive or
diplomatic posts under the Federal
Government. The rest have been pick
ed out of the crowd.
At Harrison's Inauguration the
Presidency entered an eclipse and mas
held for 20 years by secondary char
acters, who reigned. but did not rule.
With men of the eminence of Clay u
Webster, Calhoun II Benton. latterly
Cass and Houston, Douglas and Davis,
and Wade, Seward and sumner
in the Senate. distinction and leader
ship passed from the White House TO
the Capitol. 1t vas an ignoble period
in our politics when both parties were
lodging the irrepressible issue of slav-
and the smaller the candidate Tor
President the better chance he had
to dodge the question.
Thus, Harrison, the County Court
outran Henry Clay in the Wing
convention and outran Webster at the
polls in 1886 when he himself was an
unsuccessful against Var Buren,.
Again in 1910, the Wings preferred
him to Clay and made him the gro
tesque figurehead In a hippodromlng
campaign such as the country never
seen before and happily never
since has seen. As proof of the inn
partially of the Wing convention, 1t
nominated John Tyler. a Democrat,
for Vice President, on the ticket with
and adopted no platform of
party principles. Nevertheless,
Main went, hell bent,
for Governor Kent
In the September election. Thence
forth, till November, a long cabin on
wheels, with its coonskins and its
barrel of hard cider rolled noisily onT
to an easy, out empty. victory in the
For T~ippecanoe and Tyler. too.
Elected without a party policy for
his guidance, the President was ex-
'pected by Clay and Webster to &C
'cept them as his guides. He invited
both of those towering giants into his
Cabinet, but only Webster accepted,
the Secretaryship of State. To
him was submitted the inaugural ad-
dress for revision. After wading
through it's flowery rhetoric with q
pruning knife, the great man was ex-
hausted by his editorial labors and his
anxious l%andlady was moved to IN
|quire why he should look 80 wearied.
Madam" was tho reply. within II
hours 1 have killed IT Roman procon-
suls-dead as smelts every n OF
Them"
That was the first inaugural, by the
by, to be borne to the country by a
|swifter messenger than the horse. The
railroad sped it so fast that Philadel-
lphia papers astonished their leaders
iby publishing it on the very day OF its
delivery.
In the teeth of a piercing north
lwest wind, the old farmer President
elect, bareheaded and ~disdaining the
protection of an overcoat, rode horse
back to the Capitol. After addressing
Ia great crowd that shivered in It's
lshawls and furs, he insisted, though
half frozen, on remounting his horse
and leading the inaugural parade to
the White House.
No sooner was the first Wing Pres
|ident in the chair than the claims OF
faction and the clamor for patronage
lassailed him. Clay had declined
cabinet honors-and labors-in the
conident expectation of playing the
easier and more powerful role of the
power behind the throne. The i'm
Iperious manners of the Great Com
imoner wounding the Presidential
pride, he was requested to make his
at the White Hause as %infrequent
land inconspicuous as he conveniently
lcould. Thereupon his total absence
| became emb%arrassingly conspicuous.
The one clear mandate of the alb
lsurd election of 1910 was to turn
out the Democrats and give the Jobs tc
, the Wings. Straightway a hungry
horde fell upon Harrison n literally
ldevoured him. In a month to a day he
died of pneumonia. the first President
Ito die in office throughout the more
than 30 years of its existence.
This briefest of Administrations II
La pathetic little story of a simple lone
iy old man, lured from his farm to b'
| the sport of politics. Ailing in bod!
and harried in mind. he was withou
the care and eompanionship of hi
lgood wife, Anna Symmes Harrison
4 daughter of a New Jersey colonel II
the Revolution. who became one o
the pioneer soldiers of Ohio. Broker
by the hard toll OF a frontier house
II hold and sorrowing for the loss o
eight of her ten children, this wifi
of one President and grandmother o
another, still was making ready I
take up her duties as mistress of tn
II lWhite House when the news or he
husbands death came to her.
The last OF our Presidents to hay
been born before h Revolution
tlHarrrison remains the Oldest in tn