Slavery and the Presidency

Slavery is a central paradox of much of American history. In fact, most of the country’s founding fathers owned slaves.

BY EVAN ANDREWS

The United States may have been founded on the idea that all men are created equal, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slaveholding was common among the statesmen who served as president.

All told, at least 12 chief executives—over a quarter of all American presidents—were slave owners during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held slaves while in office.

 

The “peculiar institution” loomed large over the first few decades of American presidential history. Not only did slave laborers help build the White House all of the earliest presidents (except for John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams) were slave owners. George Washington kept some 300 bondsmen at his Mount Vernon plantation. Thomas Jefferson—despite once calling slavery an “assemblage of horrors”—owned around 175 servants. James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson each kept several dozen slaves, and Martin Van Buren owned one during his early career.

William Henry Harrison owned several inherited slaves before becoming president in 1841, while John Tyler and James K. Polk were both slaveholders during their stints in office. Zachary Taylor, who served from 1849-1850, was the last chief executive to keep slaves while living in the White House. He owned some 150 servants on plantations in Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Perhaps surprisingly, the last two presidents to own slaves were both men closely associated with Abraham Lincoln, who led the nation during a civil war caused in large part by the divisions sowed by slavery, and later signed the Emancipation Proclamation and championed passage of the 13th Amendment ending slavery. Andrew Johnson, who served as Lincoln’s vice president before becoming president in 1865, had owned at least half a dozen slaves in his native Tennessee and even lobbied for Lincoln to exclude the state from the Emancipation Proclamation.

The last president to personally own slaves was Ulysses S. Grant, who served two terms between 1869 and 1877.

The former commanding general of the Union Army had kept a lone black slave named William Jones in the years before the Civil War, but gave him his freedom in 1859.

Grant would later sum up his evolving views on slavery in 1878, when he was quoted as saying that it was “a stain to the Union” that people had once been “bought and sold like cattle.”

 

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1788 – Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat.

1790 – The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York City.

1793 – France declared war on Britain and Holland.

1793 – Ralph Hodgson patented oiled silk.

1842 – In New York City, the “City Despatch Post” began operations. It was a private company that was the first to introduce adhesive postage stamps in the western hemisphere. The company was bought by the U.S. governemnt a few months laster and renamed “United States City Despatch Post.”

1861 – Texas voted to secede from the Union.

1862 – “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe was first published in the “Atlantic Monthly.”

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution submitting the proposed 13th Amendment to the states.

1867 – In the U.S., bricklayers start working 8-hour days.

1884 – The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1893 – Thomas A. Edison completed work on the world’s first motion picture studio in West Orange, NJ.

1896 – Puccini’s opera “La Boheme” premiered in Turin.

1898 – The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, CT, issued the first automobile insurance policy. Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo, NY, paid $11.25 for the policy, which gave him $5,000 in liability coverage.

1900 – Eastman Kodak Co. introduced the $1 Brownie box camera.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal (also known as Grand Central Station) opened in New York City, NY. It was the largest train station in the world.

1919 – The first Miss America was crowned in New York City.

1920 – The first armored car was introduced.

1920 – Canada’s Royal North West Mounted Police changed their name to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The organization was commissioned in 1873.

1921 – Carmen Fasanella registered as a taxicab owner and driver in Princeton, New Jersey. Fasanella retired November 2, 1989 after 68 years and 243 days of service.

1929 – Weightlifter Charles Rigoulet of France achieved the first 400 pound ‘clean and jerk’ as he lifted 402-1/2 pounds.

1930 – The Times published its first crossword puzzle.

1946 – Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie was chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.

1951 – The first telecast of an atomic explosion took place.

1951 – The first X-ray moving picture process was demonstrated.

1953 – CBS-TV debuted “Private Secretary.”

1954 – CBS-TV showed “The Secret Storm” for the first time.

1957 – P.H. Young became the first black pilot on a scheduled passenger airline.

1958 – The United Arab Republic was formed by a union of Egypt and Syria. It was broken 1961.

1960 – Four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. They had been refused service.

1968 – During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. The scene was captured in a news photograph.

1976 – “Sonny and Cher” resumed on TV despite a real life divorce.

1979 – Patty Hearst was released from prison after serving 22 months of a seven-year sentence for bank robbery. Her sentence had been commuted by U.S. President Carter.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.

1987 – Terry Williams won the largest slot machine payoff, at the time, when won $4.9 million after getting four lucky 7s on a machine in Reno, NV.

1991 – A USAir jetliner crashed atop a commuter plane at Los Angeles International Airport. 35 people were killed.

1994 – Jeff Gillooly pled guilty in Portland, OR, for his role in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Gillooly, Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, struck a plea bargain under which he confessed to racketeering charges in exchange for testimony implicating Harding.

1996 – Visa and Mastercard announced security measures that would make it safe to shop on the Internet.

1998 – Stuart Whitman received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 – Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gave a deposition that was videotaped for senators weighing impeachment charges against U.S. President Clinton.

2001 – Three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Mergrahi guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. The court said that Megrahi was a member of the Libyan intelligence service. Al-Amin Khalifa, who had been co-accused, was acquitted and freed.

2003 – NASA’s space shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts on board were killed.