Here is another Guest Post from Arne Christensen:
The 12 Most Obscure Vice Presidents:
Daniel Tompkins
Brian Lamb of C-SPAN wrote this after seeing Tompkins’ gravesite in New York City:
“In the city’s East Village area, you’ll find James Monroe’s vice president, Daniel D. Tompkins, buried in the churchyard at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery. There is a statue of him, as well, quite a tribute to a politician who drank too much and was accused of mismanaging state funds as New York’s governor. After Tompkins died at 50, Congress voted to pay off his debts.”
Charles Curtis
You can visit the house of this Kaw Indian tribesman (his mother was half Kaw, his father was English) in Topeka on Saturdays from 11 to 3: it’s at 1101 S.W. Topeka Blvd., and features a museum of the man. Curtis lived with the Kaw until he was 8. His mother died when he was 3, and his Indian grandmother raised him until 1868, when the Cheyenne Indians laid siege to the Kaw.In 1984, when a lot of people thought Geraldine Ferraro was bidding to become the first minority or female VP, the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote:
“Fearing annihilation, the Kaw chiefs asked the young Indian boy to sneak out under cover of darkness and ask the U.S. Cavalry in Topeka for help. The 8-year-old Curtis travelled 60 miles on foot in 24 hours, raising the cavalry which arrived just in time to save the Kaws.While in Topeka, the young Curtis was asked to become a jockey, which he did. He retired at 14 when he became too heavy. He initially considered returning permanently to his tribe, but was persuaded by his Kaw grandmother to stay and make it in the “white man’s world”. His winnings as a jockey financed his initial education. When these funds ran out, Mr. Curtis worked as a hack carriage driver by night and studied law by day in the office of a prominent lawyer who had befriended him.Passing the bar at 21, Mr. Curtis gained instant recognition when, in his first case, he won the acquittal of an accused murderer. In 1884, he ran for Shawnee County District Attorney. His platform called for closing the saloons, which were illegally operating in this dry county. Mr. Curtis won and carried out his campaign promise.”
Mr. Curtis also has his own memorial website.
Alben Barkley
In a letter to the Washington Post in 2008, Gene Pell of Syria, Virginia, wrote:
“Alben Barkley died while giving a speech at Washington and Lee University’s mock political convention in Lexington, Va., in 1956. His last words were: ‘I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit in the seats of the mighty.’ Barkley suffered a fatal heart attack as he said those last words.”
Richard Johnson
This is from an article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:
“The Democrats won a landslide electoral vote victory in the 1836 presidential election. But 23 southern electors refused to cast their vice presidential ballots for Johnson because of his relationship with a black slave (that is, he had several children with her). As a result, for the only time in the history of the United States, the election of the vice president was thrown into the U.S. Senate. There Van Buren used his considerable influence in the Democratic-controlled legislative body to push through the election of his running mate.”
Henry Wilson
Ulysses S. Grant’s VP, he died in the Capitol, probably from a stroke, after taking a bath in the building’s basement.
Adlai E. Stevenson
This is from a March 1996 Baltimore Sun article noting that Adlai E., like his grandson, was twice on the presidential ticket (Grover Cleveland’s):
“A great story-teller, a very likable man ever in pursuit of public service, the vice president had a sunny simplicity that contrasted to troubled uncertainties of his grandson and the frosty aloofness of his great-grandson, Adlai III, for ten years a frustrated U.S. senator.”
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Hannibal Hamlin
As Lincoln’s first VP, you might think that Hamlin did some crucial things during the greatest crisis in U.S. history by advising Lincoln on how to handle the Civil War, attempting to win over the Confederate states, trying to put international pressure on the Confederacy, and those sorts of important things. You’d be wrong.
In Baltimore on the night of Feb. 22, 1861, on his way to D.C. to begin serving as VP, pro-Confederacy rioters were looking for Hamlin in his train. His obscurity preserved his life.
The New York Times related that:
“a secessionist mob… rushed Hamlin’s train and searched it from end to end, looking for the vice president-elect. They even drew back the passengers’ berth curtains. The mob found Hamlin, all right – but they failed to recognize him and moved on. Hamlin’s obscurity had saved him. The 1860 presidential campaign had focused on the presidential candidates and mostly ignored their running mates. The most recent illustration of Hamlin in the illustrated magazines had been in the June 2, 1860, issue of Harper’s Weekly.”
James Sherman
Here, from the Senate’s biography of Sherman, is the story of how Taft wound up on the ballot with a deceased running mate in the 1912 election:
“President Taft considered naming the progressive governor of Missouri, Herbert S. Hadley, to replace Sherman (who’d died on October 30), but members of the national committee persuaded the president that it would be poor politics to choose someone who was unlikely to carry his own state in the election. So Taft put off the decision and went into the election with a deceased running mate.”
Garret Hobart
This is from a July 1988 article by Marc Mappen, writing for the New York Times:
“Probably the closest a native, lifelong Jersey man has come to being President was Garret A. Hobart, who, as the 24th Vice President of the United States, was only a heartbeat away from the Presidency. But alas for New Jersey, it was Hobart’s heart that failed first.”
He died on November 21, 1899, from, yes, a heart attack, and so Teddy Roosevelt became president after William McKinley’s assassination in Buffalo in 1901 .
Levi Morton
In 1888, Morton shared the presidential ticket with an Ohioan, Benjamin Harrison. Harrison served one term, but Morton was not brought back on the ticket in 1892.
Thomas Hendricks
Hendricks died only nine months into his term as Grover Cleveland’s (first) VP.
William Wheeler
There are a lot of obscure 19th century vice-presidents, but Wheeler, the VP for Rutherford B. Hayes, is, I think, the peak of obscurity. Unlike Hendricks and Hobart, he does not have an untimely death to blame for his obscurity, and unlike Morton, he was not dropped from a presidential ticket. Read the Senate’s biography of this quiet, retiring, fragile, meek man.
