Monthly Archives: April 2011

Ulysses S. Grant
Eighteenth President
Served March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1877
Party: Republican

Born: April 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio
Died: July 23, 1885 in Mount McGregor, New York
Favorite Breakfast: Whiskey

Ulysses S. Grant came to prominence in the midst of the American Civil War, during which he was promoted to the commanding general of the United States Army after a fairly long string of well-bearded yet somehow incompetent generals failed to crush the rebellion. General Grant brought the war to the south, and eventually General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appamatox Courthouse where he committed ritual seppuku as was the honorable tradition of the Virginian farmer-warriors of the time.

After the Civil War, General Grant continued in in his position and enforced Southern Reconstruction under President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republican-dominated Congress. With his overwhelming popularity in the north, General Grant was swept into office as the next President with little opposition.

Directly beneath his paper-thin veil of a gruff and tough hard-drinking soldier, Grant was the softest of softies, doting on nearly everyone he met like a loving but very clueless grandfather. President Grant granted amnesty to former Confederates, and also passed Constitutional Amendments and legislation aimed at granting equal civil rights to those of African descent and Native Americans. This spirit of forgiveness and expansion of liberty also spread to Ulysses’s own administration, which was plagued with corruption, but would get little more than a disappointed look from the President and so continued.

A Sample Listing of Scandals During the Grant Administration: The Black Friday Affair, the New York Custom House Ring, the Star Route Postal Ring, the Salary Grab, the Sanborn Contract, the Delano Affair, the Pratt & Boyd Incident, the Whiskey Ring, the Trading Post Ring, the Safe Burglary Conspiracy, the Cattelism Connivance, the Sloppy Murders Plot, the Accidental Yukon Territory Occupation, the Hobo Handout Hookup, the Temporary Misplacement of Fairly Expensive White House China Affair, and many others

After his tenure in office, President Grant went on a world tour. He would frequently show up at foreign dignitaries’ residences and invite himself to stay for weeks at a time. No one had much the heart to tell him when he overstayed his welcome. At Buckingham Palace, Queen Victoria kept leaving President Grant’s suitcase outside the gates every day for three and a half weeks in hopes that he would “get the picture.” He never did, always bringing his belonging back inside muttering about how he must have misplaced them. At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII was forced to show the patience of a saint as he continually found President Grant reading the Roman newspaper in his night-garments on the Papal Throne. During his time in East Asia, President Grant sat down with Emperor Meiji of Japan and the Guangxu Emperor of China and told them stories about his exploits in the Mexican-American War for eleven hours straight, neither emperor wanting to offend the man by saying they really needed to get back to work.

Preceded by Andrew Johnson
Succeeded by Rutherford B. Hayes

James Buchanan
Fifteenth President
Served March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861
Party: Democratic

Born: April 23, 1791 in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania
Died: June 1, 1868 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Favorite Insult Used Against Him Because It Hurt the Least of All Others: “Dough-Face”

James Buchanan is consistently ranked as one of the worst Presidents in United States history, only because he failed to stop a little thing called the American Civil War. Everyone’s a critic, right?

There are many reasons why James Buchanan did not address the growing ferment spreading throughout the country, and even in his own Democratic Party which began severing in North-South regional divides. None of them are particularly satisfying.

At the end of his life, James Buchanan published a memoir entitled Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, which was full of tales of what exactly kept President James Buchanan so busy as to not save the nation from self-destruction. Detailed in the memoir is President Buchanan’s daring one-man mission to save the earth from the dreaded Moonmen invasion. The entire War Department’s budget for 1859 was used to build a kerosene-powered rocket train and a ramped track that would fling President Buchanan into the outer reaches of the heavens where he intercepted the Moonmen fleet and set ablaze their advanced hot air balloons of death. Another event described includes a sword fight James Buchanan had with two female ninja assassins in the White House on the evening of October 14, 1857. The account goes into excruciatingly detailed blow-for-blow commentary on the fight, and then inexplicably becomes disturbingly erotic, like James Buchanan was writing some awful Mary Sue fan fiction. No surviving copy of Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion is free from a smattering of regurgitated sick of the unfortunate past readers on these pages.

All such claims that President Buchanan was a savior of mankind or had seduced two female ninjas at once have never been corroborated with any other sources.

Preceded by Franklin Pierce
Succeeded by Abraham Lincoln

John Hanson
“First” First Through Eighth Presidents
Served November 5, 1781 – November 15, 1788

Born: April 14, 1721 in Port Tobacco, Maryland
Died: November 22, 1788 in Prince George’s County, Maryland
Favorite Ink Color: Black

Before the adoption of the Constitution, the United States was held together as one country by the Articles of Confederation. In the system set up under the Articles, Congress elected a president to individual one year terms, but the president had no power whatsoever but a ton of paperwork, so no one wanted the job. No one besides Maryland businessman John Hanson.

John Hanson was not so much intrigued by the aspect of being a powerless figurehead, but suffered from an addiction to snorting ink and the temptation of a never-ending supply was too great. He was elected as the first President on November 5, 1781. In the autumn of 1782, Congress was in disarray because Presidents could only serve one term, and John Hanson was the only man who actually wanted the job and was about to end his term. On the day of the election a man who had John Hanson’s exact frame, disposition and waistcoat, but also a huge ridiculous mustache showed up calling himself Elias Boudinot and declared his intention to run for President. Everyone in Congress knew it was John Hanson in an awful disguise, but no one said anything and elected “Elias” to the Presidency so that no one else would have to do it.

Every year Hanson appeared at the end of his term in a new persona, and was elected President each time with no opposition. One year, he masqueraded as the then-ailing Founding Father John Hancock by just holding a feather quill in front of his face. Most Congressmen agreed that was an off-year for Mr. Hanson.

Eventually, it was decided that the Articles of Confederation was not an effective governing document, and was replaced with the Constitution and a presidency with actual powers. The presidency under the Articles ended, and our “first” first through eighth President retired from public office, and died shortly after from substance withdrawal.

The “First” First Through Eighth Presidents

Preceded by ???
Succeeded by George Washington

Thomas Jefferson
Third President
Served March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1809
Party: Democratic-Republican

Born: April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia
Died: July 4, 1826 in Charlottesville, Virginia
Favorite Bible: His Own

Thomas Jefferson broke onto the national scene during the Second Continental Congress in which he was assigned to a committee to draft a declaration of independence, aptly named the Declaration of Independence. Among the other committee members were Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, but they left Thomas to write the entire thing while they went pub hopping in Philadelphia.

For a portion of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson was appointed as an ambassador to France. On a cold dark night in the winter of 1785 Jefferson happened across a cantankerous gypsy. She offered the American his greatest desires for a nominal price. Without even asking the price, Jefferson agreed and was granted continual youth at the price of correspondence with his most hated rival, John Adams. Upon hearing the price, Jefferson protested, and as the gypsy disappeared into the misty night she declared for his insolence Adams would become President of the United States before Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson is commonly held as the first politician to run on one set of principles and then govern from a completely opposite set of principles. This is now a time-honored practice of nearly all our elected officials, but it was quite ground-breaking for the time. In his campaigns for the Presidency Jefferson staunchly supported states’ rights and the limited power of the government, especially the office of the President. While in office Jefferson took unilateral steps to increase the president’s power and authority. He negotiated with Napoleon, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, doubling the territorial size of the United States. He commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition of the newly bought territory. Thomas Jefferson also personally stormed the beaches of Tripoli with the newly formed Marines after being fed up with the policy of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates who terrorized the seas. Piracy was single-handedly ended for the next two hundred years.

After his time as President, Thomas Jefferson retired to his home Monticello, where he pursued his other interests, mainly attractive slave women. In order to continue his “pursuits” into his old age, he was forced to correspond with John Adams. With their political careers behind them, the two bitter rivals were able to put behind them the bygone ordeals of the past, or at least they were able to for a time until John Adams suggested they had really written the Declaration of Independence 50-50. Thomas Jefferson refused to continue correspondence, and the two men died the same day on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the United States.

Preceded by John Adams
Succeeded by James Madison