Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

Now the stupid crook part. So the twosome search around for an expert at grave robbing to help them. Their inquiries get a response, but it is from a Pinkerton agent posing as a grave robber. He agrees to join them and assist. The three all board a train to Springfield, Illinois. Unknown to the counterfeiters, the rest of the train is swarming with Pinkerton agents.

  Before the train arrives at the Springfield station, it passes through a train yard and they all get off and hurry to Lincoln’s tomb. The tomb and memorial they planned to rob had been completed only two years earlier and dedicated with great fanfare. The two crooks and the agent divide up the duties and split up to get ready. One crook gets the tools, the second cases the tomb (and does not notice the Pinkertons), and the agent is to get a horse and wagon to carry the casket away.

  Initially the agent’s next job is to be lookout. So he has made plans to light his cigar to alert the other agents to close in and make the arrest. This would be visible on the dark night in the unlit Oak Ridge Cemetery. But as plans tend to, this one doesn’t work out. The effort to break loose and lift the coffin is so difficult that the two counterfeiters call the agent in to hold the light. This means the agent is inside the tomb where no one will see his cigar. It isn’t until probably several very nervous minutes later that Lincoln’s casket is jammed part way out of a window and that the agent is sent to get the wagon. He then lights up and the other Pinkertons close in.

  They find the casket, still hanging part way out of the window, but no crooks. It seems the two men are so exhausted from the effort of freeing and moving the large coffin that they have gone outside to cool off and are resting under some nearby bushes. They get away, but not cleanly since the Pinkertons know who they are. A few days later both are captured in Chicago.

  The trial also had its comedic aspects. It was discovered that there was no Illinois law against kidnapping a body or grave robbing. And since the two men did not actually manage to take the body, all they could be charged with was breaking the lock on the door to the tomb. For this they got one year in prison each.

  COWBOY TRAGEDY

  Did you ever wonder why rich and well-educated Teddy Roosevelt ended up in the Badlands as a cowboy? He was not exactly the typical cowboy, most of whom were barely literate and worked long lonely hours for low pay. Teddy was a Harvard graduate, had questionable health, and more wealth than most of the ranchers. The reason he left his comfortable New York existence for life in the open spaces could be a daytime drama or tear-jerking movie. While he had always loved the West and visited it many times, the reason he just up and moved west in 1884 at the age of twenty-six was that on the same day both his beloved wife and his mother died.

  NICE TRADITION

  On his twenty-first birthday, Jack Kennedy was given the gift of one million dollars by his father. Some say years later his dad bought him a lot of votes as well and it wasn’t even his birthday.

  BABY BOOMER

  The first president who was born after the end of World War II was Bill Clinton. His predecessor, George H. W. Bush, whose reelection he prevented, was old enough to have been a decorated combat pilot and war hero who fought in the Pacific Theater.

  INTESTATE

  Considering they had attorney generals working for them, there was no excuse for four of the presidents dying without a will. But they did. They were Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and Garfield.

  INSOLVENT

  Four presidents were known to be broke or in debt when they died. They were Jefferson, Monroe, William Henry Harrison, and U. S. Grant. Published after his death, Grant’s memoirs did set his widow up for life.

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  THOMAS THE THINK ENGINE

  “Never did a prisoner released from his chains feel such relief as I shall upon shaking off the shackles of power.”

  President Thomas Jefferson

  Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was renowned during his age and is even now for being quite a renaissance man. In addition to helping to found the nation and becoming President, Thomas Jefferson was noted as a linguist, author, astronomer, and musician. Jefferson spoke French, German, Spanish, and Greek. His talent for the violin was not as great as his aptitude for politics, but enough to make his playing well worth listening to. He also shared with Benjamin Franklin the distinction of being one of the foremost inventors of his day.

  A TOAST

  When JFK was speaking at a formal dinner where he was entertaining a gathering of highly esteemed Nobel Prize winners, he welcomed them as the most distinguished gathering of intellectual talent to have been in the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined there alone. Any one of them who was knowledgeable in the history of science would not have protested the comparison and there is no record anyone did.

  A FEW FIRSTS

  Thomas Jefferson was the first U.S. president to shake hands rather than following the European tradition of bowing. He was the first president to have a grandchild born in the White House. He was the first president to be inaugurated in the city of Washington, D.C.

  FOR THE BOOK

  In this case, you can judge a president by a book’s cover. Most of those who knew Thomas Jefferson were sure he was at best an agnostic, or maybe an atheist, in what was still a very religious age. Just about everyone was amazed to find that the former president had made a major effort to create his own, personalized Bible. Thomas Jefferson had cut out sections of the Gospels, mostly the various sayings of Jesus, and pasted them into a blank book. The sayings he collected were those relating to how to treat your fellow man and none of those regarding faith. So was he religious? Probably not in the traditional sense, but the president certainly put great store in Christian values.

  AND HIS BOOKS

  The United States had a few setbacks during the War of 1812. One of them was a British landing that resulted in the burning of several government buildings in Washington in 1814. At the time, the Library of Congress was being rebuilt, and there was a need for one other component: books.

  Thomas Jefferson had spent fifty years putting together one of the most complete and impressive libraries in the Americas. He had spent extensively and the almost six-thousand-five-hundred-book library contained the latest reference, scientific, historical, and philosophical titles. Now retired, Jefferson generously offered to sell the government the books he had spent most of his life accumulating. The offer was quickly accepted and, for just under $24,000, purchased. A short time later, twelve wagonloads of books arrived at the newly finished library building. Even today you can find Thomas Jefferson’s personal stamp on many titles in the rare books room.

  VINTAGE

  Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was a Virginia aristocrat and preferred to live like one. He made every effort to make the Executive Mansion as comfortable as his elegant home, Monticello, on which he personally had done much of the labor. Among his actions was to bring with him, at his own expense, about a dozen servants, and to have a well-stocked larder and wine cellar. The wine bill for his two terms in office exceeded $10,000, a very large sum for that time.

  A NERD?

  While unquestionably brilliant and an astute politician, Jefferson was also a bit eccentric. One of his habits, that of greeting foreign emissaries while still wearing his pajamas, rankled the dignity and occasionally seriously upset such distinguished visitors.

  HOME SWEAT HOME

  Thomas Jefferson took a very direct hand in the construction of his famous mansion, Monticello. He helped to cut the timbers, worked at making the bricks used, helped build the walls, and even supervised the making of the nails used on the plantation. Those whitewashing the presidents will stop there and not add that most of the rest of the labor was performed by his slaves. This was not a small task, the house having a total of thirty-three rooms, including twelve bedrooms and what we would call a “finished” basement, with ten rooms in it. This is a large place for just one widower to live in, even with Sally Hemmings sharing it. But the president entertained and often had his ch
ildren and grandchildren there to fill the place up. Monticello was also a modern home, even by today’s definitions. It made use of solar heating, natural air flows, advanced plumbing, interior shutters for privacy, insulated walls, an attached greenhouse to provide extra warmth from the sun, and many other advances that we are just rediscovering as energy prices rise.

  NOT ALL HIS SWEAT

  In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included a scathing attack on the institution of slavery. In order to ensure the Southern states’ support, that part was later deleted. Jefferson was verbally a staunch opponent of slavery. Yet all his life, including when he was writing the Declaration of Independence, he was also a slave owner. Which leads to one question: Was he guilty of hypocrisy? Even after Jefferson retired from the presidency, Monticello was one of the largest slave-operated estates in the entire nation. But Jefferson, for what it is worth, tried to be as humane as possible and freed several. Due to financial problems during his later years, Jefferson died over $100,000 in debt. His estate made up some of the debt by selling off all of Monticello’s slaves.

  A STREET CAR NAMED JEFFERSON

  Every time you get on a bus or streetcar and the doors fold open, you are looking at something that was modeled on plans created by Thomas Jefferson. Those doors you use every day take their basic design from an idea that Jefferson had two hundred years ago. Most of the third president’s inventions were of a practical nature. He invented a highly efficient letter copying press, both a swivel and a folding chair, a hemp machine that broke apart the fibers so that hemp could be used to make cloth and paper, and one of the first folding ladders. It wasn’t just here that Jefferson’s genius was acknowledged. He created a plow that took first prize at the Paris Exposition and that is the ancestor of the modern plow in use today.

  Thomas Jefferson liked to turn to science to solve problems. He liked long walks and often wondered how far they took him. To find out, he invented a pedometer. He had an interest in weather and not only kept records to look for patterns, but when he built Monticello he included a cunningly placed weather vane that could be seen from both inside and outside the mansion. As an amateur astronomer, he was able to calculate correctly the date and time of an eclipse and built one of the first telescopes to be used in the United States.

  PLAIN MONEY

  It was Thomas Jefferson, striving for mathematical simplicity, who devised our decimal system of dimes and dollars so that the arithmetic of money would be easy to calculate. The British monetary system of this period, like most European systems, was much more complicated, having evolved over a long period and often combining several earlier systems.

  PEN PAL

  Thomas Jefferson was an inveterate letter writer. Before the days of telegraph or phones, this was the only way to keep in contact. Letters by the president and Founding Father are fairly common in the collector’s market for one reason: it is estimated that over his lifetime Jefferson wrote and sent around twenty-five thousand letters. Of course, keeping up with what he said and promised in such a massive volume of correspondence was also a challenge. The inventor Jefferson triumphed here with a letter press that made copies of his letters before they were sent. These were kept on file and could be referred to when necessary. The bulk of the letters were sent after Jefferson retired to his estate of Monticello. He considered it a point of honor to answer every letter he received. Beyond friends, statesmen, scientists, and those wanting favors, the former president often received correspondence whose main purpose was simply to get a letter and, as a result, an autograph back. Jefferson never used a secretary and every one of the thousands of letters was written by hand.

  SINGULAR HONOR

  Thomas Jefferson is the only U.S. vice president who was next elected president who was also voted into a second term as president.

  TOP HOST

  After his long career serving the United States as congressman, senator, vice president, president, and diplomat to a foreign nation, Thomas Jefferson finally retired to Monticello. There he became the consummate host, entertaining in great style until it hurt. When Jefferson retired, he was a fairly rich man. Monticello had a dozen bedrooms and it was rare, except when the weather closed the roads, for any of them to be unoccupied. Not only did old friends often visit, but many “new friends” also appeared at his door. Few were ever turned away. Some wanted to share some of the founding father’s glory, others were sincere friends and supporters, but a number were there simply to take advantage of the proud and generous former president. After years of being the most hospitable host in Virginia, the financial strain took its toll. The final straw was when Jefferson cosigned a note for what was then the very large sum of $20,000. The friend he had signed for defaulted and Jefferson had to use most of his remaining funds to pay off the debt. Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson also had many true friends who rallied to help him financially. Without their help it is likely the genius of Monticello would have died in poverty. Instead, with his hospitality toned down a good deal, he remained comfortable in his mansion for the rest of his years.

  HE DID HAVE SEX WITH THAT WOMAN

  Thomas Jefferson was single at the time his close friend John Walker was sent to New York, several hard travel days away, to negotiate a treaty. It appears that the future president took his promise to take care of the very beautiful Betsy Walker a bit too literally. They were discreet and only years later did an outraged John Walker find out about the couple’s indiscretions.

  In a later day, Thomas Jefferson would have been called a “Bohemian” for his free thinking and free love attitudes. (You have to wonder if he learned them from Ben Franklin, whose exploits were notorious even in his day.) While a widower in Paris as the U.S. minister to France, he was seen to actively pursue, but probably without success, a married woman named Maria Cosway. At one point, showing off while strolling, the young Jefferson jumped over a fence—and promptly broke his wrist. All his life Thomas Jefferson called himself a “natural philosopher” when asked about religion. It seems this fit with his philosophy of doing what comes natural, even if the other woman was married.

  UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

  When you are as dynamic as Thomas Jefferson a little thing like retirement, or being eighty-two in an era when men normally died in their fifties, doesn’t slow you down. At that late age he decided to establish a university For most people, this would involve chairing a committee and hiring lots of specialists, but not Thomas Jefferson. He sited the school in Charlottesville, only four miles from Monticello. This made it easy for him to do much of the work himself. The former president supervised virtually all of the construction, making suggestions regularly. If the weather was too rough for him to make the buggy ride, Jefferson would use his telescope to watch the work from his home. He also played a large part in the design of the buildings and layout of the campus. Some of the campus features, such as the serpentine wall, are considered architectural masterpieces. Even starting at that age, Jefferson lived to see the campus of the University of Virginia finished and filled with students. He took great pride in the school and his central role in its creation. He also often enjoyed hosting students at Monticello and dispensing his unquestioned wisdom to them.

  SPY GAME

  We sometimes read about attachés at embassies actually being spies. In the good old days it was often the ambassador himself. Such was the case with Thomas Jefferson while minister to France. This was a period also when agriculture was the main source of wealth for most of the world. This meant that a superior plant or new crop was as much a state asset as high-tech computer chips can be today. Jefferson was himself a landowner and as a result was always on the lookout for something that would help America’s farmers. He found one such plant in the south of France. There he came across a form of rice that was generally considered superior to that being grown in the United States at the time. The problem was that it was being eaten and preferred in southern France, but came from Italy.
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  This Italian rice was also considered a state secret in Lombardy, the part of Italy closest to France that grew it. But this did not deter Thomas Jefferson, who literally stuffed his pockets with the seeds. He later hired a mule driver to smuggle bags of seeds into France, from which point Jefferson could send them on to America. His efforts worked. The new Italian rice was a hit and is still grown today under several names.

  THE BIG SCANDAL

  It all started in 1802. Thomas Jefferson was president, and presidents make enemies. This one was named James Thomson Callender. As revenge for Jefferson and his party attacking him in the papers, Callender publicized the relationship, to be polite, between Thomas Jefferson and one of his slaves. The slave was Sally Hemmings, who was likely also the half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife. There is nothing like a good scandal to catch the eye of the American public, then or now. This one was a doozy and has appeared and reappeared for over two centuries. Just recently there was a new burst of interest when the descendants of Sally Hemmings all applied to join a society whose membership requirement is that you be descended from Thomas Jefferson. DNA evidence has proven at least one, if not five, of Sally Hemmings’ children had been fathered by Jefferson.

  One of the reasons the decades-long affair raised such a furor was that it involved one of the more embarrassing aspects of slavery, the sexual exploitation of the slaves. It was a constant, but rarely discussed, part of the slave-holding culture. The even less discussed side of this was that if you had sex with a slave and she had a child, you would end up owning your own son or daughter as a slave and a slave that was of mixed race, referred to then as a mulatto, at that. So what they had was the forbidden combined with the unspoken.

  When Martha Jefferson died, Thomas Jefferson was only forty-eight. But that made him considerably older than the seventeen-year-old Sally Hemmings. Their affair is known to have continued off and on until he died thirty-three years later. It was surprising that even in his will Jefferson freed five of his slaves, but not Sally Hemmings. Only later did Martha Randolph, Jefferson’s daughter who inherited her, set her free.