This was a pretty important guy in that he WON the CIVIL WAR. Not all by himself or anything, it wasn't World of Warcraft, he had tons of help.
His main enemy was this JERK called "Robert E. Lee" that created SO much trouble. Robert E. Lee eventually conceded that what he was DOING was wrong, and GAVE UP. Kind of like happens in movies, but this was real. There ARE movies about the Civil War, but they are mostly factual. No true excitement like aliens and laser beams.
I gotta bring up a pretty obvious point now. How come SO many more kids are baby-named "Robert" as opposed to "Ulysses?" There are charts and graphs to prove it. Is Ulysses such a bad name? The kid could go by "Uli" or whatever.
Imagine a misbehaving or disrespectful kid with that name getting yelled at.
"ULI! Do NOT speak out of turn!"
"Eat your damn potatoes, Uli. and then SHUT-UP."
Whereas "Robert" gets all praised.
"Ooh, you were given a tee-ball trophy, Robert. Good for you."
Life ain't fair, and neither was the Civil War.
Quit fightin it, you SYMPATHISTS. You know who you are. Ulysses S. Grant victorious 4 lyfe.
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BANG!
So just like that, Andrew Johnson becomes President, replacing the assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Tough shoes to fill. (He did not even TRY fitting into the hat.)
He is not considered to have been a good President. The Civil War had just ended, and without Lincoln around, Andrew Johnson wasn't sure what to do next. You've got all these seceded and defeated (rhyme) Southern states that you've inherited now. Where do we go from here?
To make a long story short, he got IMPEACHED. The very first President that it ever happened to. There is no documentation of this but he must have been like, "What? IMPEACHMENT!?!? I didn't even know that was a rule, I just got here!"
Before his death, Abraham Lincoln had freed all the slaves, and decent people everywhere were so happy. It would now be up to Andrew Johnson to figure out how to protect and integrate them as full citizens, and he did not do a good job. So he was impeached, but still somehow slipped by and was able to remain President when the vote to kick him out came up one short.
I bet he was wiping his brow all like "WHEW! That was CLOSE!"
About two months later, he was finished. He did not even make it to the next Presidential election itself. His own party would not give him the nomination. In fact he got pretty badly crushed.
Did he give up? NO!
Having been a U.S. Senator prior to being elected Vice President, he made a bold decision to run for the Senate AGAIN.
He lost.
So then after a few MORE years had passed, he figured "Okay then I shall run for the HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES!"
Again, no dice.
a few years after THAT, Andrew Johnson's never-say-die attitude paid off and he was FINALLY elected to the Senate for a second term. "Thank God for the vindication," he remarked.
He died of a stroke several months later.
Good-bye Andrew Johnson. At least LINCOLN liked you.
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The most honest man ever. INCLUDING Bill Clinton.
Abraham Lincoln gets to be on pennies because he was honest. I gotta ask though, what's with George Washington? He goes around doing bad stuff like chopping down cherry trees and THEN confesses that he did it. That ain't honesty, that is CRIME.
Most people consider Lincoln to be the best President. Why then did they put him on the FIVE dollar bill exactly? He should be on the most expensive one, whatever it is. Like how the $500 bill in Monopoly gets to be orange because it's the coolest color.
Did Abe Lincoln EVER do anything bad? He lived in a log cabin in the WOODS, anything could happen out there. I bet at least once he secretly chopped down a chestnut tree and then hogged all the chestnuts for himself.
Where did he get the lumber for those log cabins? Were the original Lincoln Logs THIEVED?
Since he is on the penny (every single ONE, if you don't believe me go check besides Canada), somebody should build a miniature log cabin out of actual penny rolls. a tiny little spider named "John Wilkes Booth" could live in it for awhile, and then one day, out of nowhere, you suddenly squish him for therapeutic revenge.
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The only President that never married. On one hand, that might sound like a good thing. No nagging.
But then again, maybe he could have used some.
Wife: Umm, you KNOW we're about to have a Civil War, right?
Buchanan: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Wife: Well what are you going to DO about it?
Buchanan: I'm not sure yet.
Wife: Well we need to figure this out.
Buchanan: Yeah, duh.
Wife: Also you need to take out the garbage.
Buchanan: I just did.
Wife: Well I made more since then.
Buchanan: GOD DAMMIT.
Wife: I mean you know this is going to be Brother Against Brother, right?
Buchanan: I KNOW.
Unlike most of American History, though, that conversation did not happen.
Was James Buchanan LONELY? Who did he eat dinner with? a lot of times the President gets to eat dinner with important people like Sultans and Kings from other lands. But EVERY SINGLE NIGHT? What if it was just some random Tuesday? The President of the United States can't sit there eating tacos all by himself. Or can he? I don't know the rules.
Did he go on DATES? If so did the Secret Service guy sitting next to him get to eat too? Imagine trying to mack on a lady while a Secret Service officer is sitting next to you eating a steak and a twice-baked potato.
"That looks good, how is it?"
"Good, Mr. President."
Actually, I don't think they had actual Secret Service yet in those times, but the President HAD to have had SOME kind of bodyguard or whatever. Hey maybe that's who he ate dinner with. Nobody likes to eat alone.
"Pull up a chair and HAVE some of this."
"Thank you, Mr. President."
Then afterwards there might be cocktails and dancing and whatever else.
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Anybody out there still a Civil War buff? If so, you must be fond of Franklin Pierce. He STARTED it, except not on purpose.
Let me explain.
Franklin Pierce was a really nice, well-meaning, likeable person. He just was not very good at being the President, so he accidentally triggered the Civil War, and thousands of people died.
Whoops-a-daisy.
What happened was that nobody liked those damn Whigs. (F the Whigs! Is anybody still in that party? In case you are, F you too.)
So Franklin got elected instead based on being JOVIAL.
Everybody, especially these days, hates the President of the United States. But then the President secretly does a good job behind everybody's back. This was the opposite. Everybody liked Franklin Pierce, but he ruined the country anyway. At least for awhile. I wasn't around yet but I've heard that the "Roaring Twenties" were pretty decent.
Franklin Pierce's nickname was "doughface." Not just for him, it was a hurtful term that people liked to throw around frequently back then. It was believed by the North that he liked the South too much, so they decided to get back at him by calling him doughface. So then we had a Civil War, and history was never the same.
You were a bad President, but at least you tried your best, doughface.
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He had his way. He shuffled off to Buffalo.
"Millard Fillmore" is a very nerdy-sounding name. People don't make fun of it as much as "Archibald Butterfinger" or "Richard Cox," but it's still up there. He was named after his mother AND his father, because that's what every kid wants. Suffice to say, he did not grow up normally.
He became U.S. President instead, sort of.
Millard Fillmore inherited the title of President of the United States when Zachary Taylor died in the year 1850. It is widely suspected that President Taylor may have been the victim of poisonous MURDER, but nobody of note has ever suggested that Fillmore committed the crime.
Since Zachary Taylor was obviously not able to fix EVERYTHING before he got bumped off, this left Fillmore with plenty to do. The main thing he did was add California as a state, but he did not have the foresight to chop it up first. So now it's still there and way too big and populated and good old Millard ain't around to be held accountable no more. Shrewd.
Because of this and many other reasons, Millard Fillmore was never again allowed to be President. As a part of his horrible downspiral, he also chose to align himself with a group called the "Know Nothing" party. For realsies. It's difficult to tell what his agent was thinking right then. Perhaps it was intended to be a Generation X "We Don't Care!" type approach that just never found its legs. Curious.
"I don't know anything! Elect me!" (No Bush jokes, please.)
So upon being shunned by Democrats, Republicans, and Whiggers alike, Millard Fillmore retreated to his hometown of Buffalo, NY and built himself his own house, which remains standing to this day. Nobody is allowed to live in it though, so don't even TRY to buy it.
You might call him the Do-It-Yourself President. Especially because he didn't really DO anything. "Run your own damn country, I don't know. Where's the wings?"
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This is the tale of President Zachary Taylor.
It is also a tale...
...of MURDER.
Before we get to that, though, let's race through the pleasant stuff. Born in 1784, Zachary Taylor was a war hero. a Mexican-AMERICAN war hero (on the American side). While serving in the military, he established significant "landholdings," and it was subsequently suggested, by most, that he should be the President of the United States.
So he ran for President, and WON.
Hence, murder.
Onto our story...
Zachary Taylor was allegedly ASSASSINATED in the form of a poisoned fruit dessert. They were unable to prove it at the time, because magnifying glasses and other ways of solving crimes had not been invented yet. If you were a crime-solving person in the year 1850 all you could really do was rub your chin all skeptical and "wonder." Maybe smoke a pipe. Then before you knew it Christmas would come and all would be forgotten.
The purported reason behind his murder was that he opposed slavery, which was a very controversial topic at the time. Like a lot of people that opposed slavery in 1850, Zachary Taylor attempted to lay low and avoid controversy by simply OWNING SLAVES.
Not a very good plan, on any level. Sooner or later it's gonna catch up with you.
Zachary Taylor became sick and died when he ate cherries with iced milk after serving only 16 months as President. How damn peculiar.
Good thing the U.S. Government can never let things go. They EXHUMED him in 1991 to get to the bottom of the whole thing. The lab results were inconclusive, so then I guess they just put him back. Gave somebody an interesting story to tell at the dinner table that night, I suppose.
Husband: Guess what *I* did at work today? I dug up President Zachary Taylor's body with a big yellow CRANE.
Wife: Well things are pretty interesting at the middle school too, this big fundraiser we're having.
My favorite thing about Zachary Taylor is that he did not CARE about politics. He only cared about being a good war general, but became President anyway because everybody told him to. That's how you do it in politics, act all sheepish and disinterested. The public will then insist you are the man for the job.
Reporter: Excuse me President Taylor, why do you want to be President?
Zachary Taylor: I do not know what is going on. Next question.
Reporter: As President, will you end all WARS?
Zachary Taylor: Definitely not. Next question.
Reporter: What about people having MONEY?
Zachary Taylor: I'm okay with it. Next question.
...
Zachary Taylor: Nothing? Really?
...
Zachary Taylor: Okay good, what time's dessert?
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