Download or read book Zachary Taylor written by Prof. Holman Hamilton and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-28 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tome is the second volume of Holman Hamilton’s landmark biography of Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), the 12th President of the United States. It examines Taylor’s brief but important political career and traces Taylor’s life from his return to the U.S. in December of 1847 from the bloody Mexican battlefields, to his death on July 9, 1850, a mere sixteen months after assuming the office of the presidency. As interesting as the history surrounding Zachary Taylor’s life is the man himself. Taylor was no politician. Throughout his life, he never voted in an election. He knew little of the party that nominated him. And he candidly admitted no opinion on certain political questions, and on others was reluctant to comment at all. At the end of his famous Allison letter that secured him the presidency in 1848, he stated: “I do not know that I again shall ever write upon the subject of national politics.” How and why he was elected President are just some of the questions that Hamilton answers about one of America’s most unusual presidencies. Zachary Taylor: Soldier in the White House is the sequel to Zachary Taylor Soldier of the Republic. Together, both volumes represent what is considered by historians to be the definitive biography of the 12th President of the U.S. Lauded for his meticulous research and highly readable style, the late Holman Hamilton, a noted journalist and editor, set out to “write entertainingly and even artistically about men and events in the realm of actuality.” Both volumes of this extraordinary biography are ample proof that he accomplished his goal.
Download or read book Zachary Taylor written by K. Jack Bauer and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1993-08-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering the course his life took, one might wonder how Zachary Taylor ever came to be elected the twelfth president of the United States. According to K. Jack Bauer, Taylor “was and remains an enigma.” He was a southerner who espoused many antisouthern causes, an aristocrat with a strong feeling for the common man, an energetic yet cautious and conservative soldier. Not an intellectual, Taylor showed little curiosity about the world around him. In this biography—the most comprehensive since Holman Hamilton’s two-volume work published forty years ago—Bauer offers a fresh appraisal of Taylor’s life and suggests that Taylor may have been neither so simple nor so nonpolitical as many historians have believed. Taylor’s sixteen months as president were marked by disputes over California statehood and the Texas–New Mexico boundary. Taylor vehemently opposed slavery extension and threatened to hang those southern hotheads who favored violence and secession as a means to protect their interests. He died just as he had begun a reorganization of his administration and a recasting of the Whig party. Balanced and judicious, forthright and unreverential, and based on thoroughgoing research, this book will be for many years the standard biography of Zachary Taylor.
Download or read book Zachary Taylor written by Holman Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Zachary Taylor written by John S. D. Eisenhower and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rough-hewn general who rose to the nation's highest office, and whose presidency witnessed the first political skirmishes that would lead to the Civil War Zachary Taylor was a soldier's soldier, a man who lived up to his nickname, "Old Rough and Ready." Having risen through the ranks of the U.S. Army, he achieved his greatest success in the Mexican War, propelling him to the nation's highest office in the election of 1848. He was the first man to have been elected president without having held a lower political office. John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of another soldier-president, shows how Taylor rose to the presidency, where he confronted the most contentious political issue of his age: slavery. The political storm reached a crescendo in 1849, when California, newly populated after the Gold Rush, applied for statehood with an anti- slavery constitution, an event that upset the delicate balance of slave and free states and pushed both sides to the brink. As the acrimonious debate intensified, Taylor stood his ground in favor of California's admission—despite being a slaveholder himself—but in July 1850 he unexpectedly took ill, and within a week he was dead. His truncated presidency had exposed the fateful rift that would soon tear the country apart.
Download or read book Zachary Taylor Soldier in the White House written by Holman Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Zachary Taylor V1 written by Holman Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Two Volumes. Volume 1, Soldier Of The Republic; Volume 2, Soldier In The White House.
Download or read book Polk written by Walter R. Borneman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the lion’s share of Oregon, and wrested California and much of the Southwest from Mexico. On reflection, these successes seem even more impressive, given the contentious political environment of the time. In this unprecedented, long-overdue warts-and-all look at Polk’s life and career, we have a portrait of an expansionist president and decisive statesman who redefined the country he led, and we are reminded anew of the true meaning of presidential accomplishment and resolve.
Download or read book Ragtime in the White House written by Eliot Vestner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History played a trick on McKinley. He has been consigned to the shadows between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, vilified or ignored by historians . . . It is a richly undeserved fate. As Eliot Vestner demonstrates in this narrative of the political life of William McKinley, there was much more to the twenty-fifth president’s tenure in office than history books allow. He was a popular president, winning a second term with ease. But only nine months into it, he was assassinated by a self-described anarchist. What more he might have accomplished is anyone’s guess. He had managed to successfully pull America out of one of the worst economic depressions yet experienced, the Panic of 1893. And his controversial tariffs strengthened industry and contributed to the overall wealth of the country, as did his return of the country to the gold standard. He also led the U.S. to victory in the Spanish-American war, and implemented the first steps toward building the Panama Canal, which his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, continued. Perhaps the most under-appreciated aspect of McKinley’s presidency was his advocacy for black civil rights, and his challenge to the white supremacy of the south. As governor of Ohio, he fought against lynching. He signed a ground-breaking anti-lynching bill. Ironically, as president, he had a much more difficult time combating violence and racial injustice because of the use of states’ rights as justification for voter suppression and terrorism towards blacks. He pursued opportunities to advance the interests of black Americans wherever he could, but his inability to stop the lynchings and disfranchisement of blacks was most regrettable. His successors had no interest in the race issue, which remained unresolved until the 1954 court decision in Brown v. The Board of Education. This book gives McKinley his due, and thereby helps us better understand a President of the United States whose work has seemingly been overlooked by most Americans today.
Download or read book True Stories of Our Presidents written by Charles Morris and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True Stories of Our Presidents is a collection of short histories of our presidents, written for a high school audience.
Download or read book Millard Fillmore written by Paul Finkelman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The oddly named president whose shortsightedness and stubbornness fractured the nation and sowed the seeds of civil war In the summer of 1850, America was at a terrible crossroads. Congress was in an uproar over slavery, and it was not clear if a compromise could be found. In the midst of the debate, President Zachary Taylor suddenly took ill and died. The presidency, and the crisis, now fell to the little-known vice president from upstate New York. In this eye-opening biography, the legal scholar and historian Paul Finkelman reveals how Millard Fillmore's response to the crisis he inherited set the country on a dangerous path that led to the Civil War. He shows how Fillmore stubbornly catered to the South, alienating his fellow Northerners and creating a fatal rift in the Whig Party, which would soon disappear from American politics—as would Fillmore himself, after failing to regain the White House under the banner of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" Party. Though Fillmore did have an eye toward the future, dispatching Commodore Matthew Perry on the famous voyage that opened Japan to the West and on the central issues of the age—immigration, religious toleration, and most of all slavery—his myopic vision led to the destruction of his presidency, his party, and ultimately, the Union itself.
Download or read book Real Life at the White House written by John Whitcomb and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An irresistible chronological overview of daily life in the presidential residence. Divided into 42 chapters representing each succeeding administration, this survey is brimming with fun facts, tantalizing tidbits, and memorable anecdotes detailing two centuries of domestic bliss and strife in the White House. From George Washington, who chose the sight and initiated work on the presidential mansion, to Bill Clinton, whose well-documented White House escapades titillated and scandalized the nation, each individual president has contributed to the mystique of the most readily recognized home in the U.S. Together with scores of drawings, portraits, and photographs, the breezy text chronicles the significant physical, social, and emotional changes wrought by each First Family as they sought to personalize daily life in the White House.
Download or read book The Presidents and the Constitution written by Ken Gormley and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shines new light on America's brilliant constitutional and presidential history, from George Washington to Barack Obama. In this sweepingly ambitious volume, the nation’s foremost experts on the American presidency and the U.S. Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how each American president has confronted and shaped the Constitution. Each occupant of the office—the first president to the forty-fourth—has contributed to the story of the Constitution through the decisions he made and the actions he took as the nation’s chief executive. By examining presidential history through the lens of constitutional conflicts and challenges, The Presidents and the Constitution offers a fresh perspective on how the Constitution has evolved in the hands of individual presidents. It delves into key moments in American history, from Washington’s early battles with Congress to the advent of the national security presidency under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, to reveal the dramatic historical forces that drove these presidents to action. Historians and legal experts, including Richard Ellis, Gary Hart, Stanley Kutler and Kenneth Starr, bring the Constitution to life, and show how the awesome powers of the American presidency have been shapes by the men who were granted them. The book brings to the fore the overarching constitutional themes that span this country’s history and ties together presidencies in a way never before accomplished.
Download or read book Zachary Taylor written by John S. D. Eisenhower and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A profile of the twelfth president traces his rise in the military and successes in the Mexican War to his election as the first president without a prior political office, in an account that also offers insight into Taylor's views on slavery and his sudden death.
Download or read book The Rhetorical Presidency written by Jeffrey K. Tulis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern presidents regularly appeal over the heads of Congress to the people at large to generate support for public policies. The Rhetorical Presidency makes the case that this development, born at the outset of the twentieth century, is the product of conscious political choices that fundamentally transformed the presidency and the meaning of American governance. Now with a new foreword by Russell Muirhead and a new afterword by the author, this landmark work probes political pathologies and analyzes the dilemmas of presidential statecraft. Extending a tradition of American political writing that begins with The Federalist and continues with Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government, The Rhetorical Presidency remains a pivotal work in its field.
Download or read book America s Great Debate written by Fergus M. Bordewich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the 1850s appeals of Western territories to join the Union as slave or free states, profiling period balances in the Senate, Henry Clay's attempts at compromise, and the border crisis between New Mexico and Texas.
Download or read book The Worst President The Story of James Buchanan written by Garry Boulard and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-03-23 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just 24 hours after former President James Buchanan died on June 1, 1868, the Chicago Tribune rejoiced: “This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge an ancestry from him.” Nearly a century and a half later, in 2004, writer Christopher Buckley observed “It is probably just as well that James Buchanan was our only bachelor president. There are no descendants bracing every morning on opening the paper to find another heading announcing: ‘Buchanan Once Again Rated Worst President in History.’” How to explain such remarkably consistent historical views of the man who turned over a divided and demoralized country to Abraham Lincoln, the same man regarded through the decades by presidential scholars as the worst president in U.S. history? In this exploration of the presidency of James Buchanan, 1857-61, Garry Boulard revisits the 15th President and comes away with a stunning conclusion: Buchanan’s performance as the nation’s chief executive was even more deplorable and sordid than scholars generally know, making his status as the country’s worst president richly deserved. Boulard documents Buchanan’s failure to stand up to the slaveholding interests of the South, his indecisiveness in dealing with the secession movement, and his inability to provide leadership during the nation’s gravest constitutional crisis. Using the letters of Buchanan, as well as those of more than two dozen political leaders and thinkers of the time, Boulard presents a narrative of a timid and vacillating president whose drift and isolation opened the door to the Civil War. The author of The Expatriation of Franklin Pierce: The Story of a President and the Civil War (iUniverse, 2006), Boulard has reported for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and is a business writer for the Albuquerque-based Construction Reporter.
Download or read book The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore written by Elbert B. Smith and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book Elbert B. Smith disagrees sharply with traditional interpretations of Taylor and Fillmore, the twelfth and thirteenth presidents (from 1848 to 1853). Smith argues that Taylor and Fillmore have been seriously misrepresented and underrated. They faced a terrible national crisis and accepted every responsibility without flinching or directing blame toward anyone else."--Publisher.
