February 18, 2019 (Monday)
President’s Day is a day set aside to honor all of the U.S. presidents. We often think of two great presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln when we celebrate this holiday, as it falls by design between their birthdays. More and more of us, look at this day as a tribute to each and every person who has ever served in the office of the President of the United States of America.It is a national holiday. While Federal employees, the post office, and banks have the day off, most businesses and industry do not recognize it as a paid holiday.
Our country has had 45 presidents. Nine men did not serve out their terms of office: four died of illness, four were assassinated, and one resigned. Two presidents have been impeached by the House, but neither was convicted by the Senate. Nine vice presidents have become president and served out the terms of those they replaced. Four of them then ran for president on their own and succeeded. One of them (Teddy Roosevelt) later ran again but lost to William Howard Taft (in 1909). Fourteen presidents had served as Vice-President.
Two pairs of presidents were father and son. One president served two terms separated by a term served by someone else. He (Grover Cleveland) is always listed as two presidents in official lists. The only president elected to four terms was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 22nd Amendment now limits consecutive terms to two.
In a list of presidents and their vice-presidents, I discovered that some years were without a vice-president. Then I found out by reading further that the Constitution did not provide for succession to the office of Vice-President until 1947. Revised in 2006, the law now provides a plan to replace the vice president if he leaves office before his term expires. The same 1947 law clarifies the presidential succession issue. The 25th amendment provides a method to fill a vice president vacancy.
ROW 1 – 1789-1841 /// George Washington (1789), John Adams (1797), Thomas Jefferson (1801), James Madison (1809), James Monroe (1817), John Quincy Adams (1825), Andrew Jackson (1829), Martin Van Buren (1837), William Henry Harrison (1841).
ROW 2 – 1841-1877 /// John Tyler (1841), James K. Polk (1845), Zachary Taylor (1849), Millard Fillmore (1850), Franklin Pierce (1853), James Buchanan (1857), Abraham Lincoln (1861), Andrew Johnson (1865), Ulysses S. Grant (1869).
ROW 3 – 1877-1909 /// Rutherford B. Hayes (1877), James A. Garfield (1881), Chester Arthur (1881), Grover Cleveland (1885), Benjamin Harrison (1889), Grover Cleveland (1893), William McKinley (1897), Theodore Roosevelt (1901), William Howard Taft (1909).
ROW 4 – 1913-1969 /// Woodrow Wilson (1913), Warren G. Harding (1921), Calvin Coolidge (1923), Herbert Hoover (1929), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933), Harry S. Truman (1945), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953), John F. Kennedy (1961), Lyndon B. Johnson (1963).
ROW 5 – 1969-PRESENT /// Richard Nixon (1969), Gerald Ford (1974), Jimmy Carter (1977), Ronald Reagan (1981), George H. W. Bush (1989), Bill Clinton (1993), George W. Bush (2001), Barrack Obama (2009), Donald J. Trump (2017).
