American History Revised by Jr. Seymour Morris Read Free Book Online Page A

did much to mold our Republic in a form in which a man’s religion does not make him ineligible for political or governmental life.” While on a trip to Paris in 1832, Uriah Levy commissioned the French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers to create a full-scale bronze of Jefferson for the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol (where it still stands today). Upon arriving back in the United States with his statue, he learned that Monticello was for sale. He bought it and started to restore it, but then came the Civil War and his death, upon which the family bequeathed it to the U.S. government. Unoccupied and unattended to, the house became a derelict.
    To the rescue came another Levy, Uriah Levy’s nephew, with the appropriate name of Jefferson Levy. The decrepit hulk available for sale in 1879 needed a total restoration. Fortunately, Jefferson Levy was a wealthy man. He bought the property and invested more than a million dollars during the next thirty years (he also became a congressman from New York). In 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a private fund-raising effort enabled the U.S. government to finally buy Monticello for $500,000. By the narrowest of margins, thanks to two remarkable men who had a passion for history, we now have a house that is one of America’s favorite shrines.

    Monticello in 1870, deserted and abandoned

    Monticello today
President Because of Two Deaths in the Wrong Order
    1901 Everyone knows that when the president dies and the vice president dies, the next person in line is the Speaker of the House.
    But what if the vice president dies first? The second in line is not the Speaker of the House; in fact nobody knows who it might be. There is no provision in the Constitution for this unforeseen contingency because the Founding Fathers never envisioned it.
    In a period of eighteen months, a man came out of nowhere to become president because of two deaths in the wrong order. In November 1899, Garret Hobart, vice president of the United States, died of a heart attack. Because there were only a few months left before the 1900 election, President William McKinley left the position unfilled. He sought as his running mate Senator William Allison of Iowa, who turned it down. He then turned to the prominent lawyer Elihu Root, who also turned it down, hoping for the better position of secretary of war. At the convention, McKinley, against the advice of his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, opened up the floor to the delegates, who nominated the young governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt accepted the nomination because he had accomplished pretty much what he could in two years as governor and was making little headway against the powerful political boss of New York City, Thomas Platt. Accepting the vice presidency was hardly a promotion; quite the contrary, it was the case of a man being kicked upstairs because he was such a nuisance in his current position. His wife was not happy with the change because they had six children and the vice presidency paid a much smaller salary than that of governor, plus it did not come with a house.
    After several months, she feared her husband was becoming bored in “such a useless and empty position.” Even Theodore Roosevelt was beginning to admit second thoughts. The position, he said, “ought to be abolished.”
    The one benefit, of course, is that the job is just a heartbeat away from the big position, which raises the interesting question of just what Theodore Roosevelt’s real thoughts were. He might well have known of the misfortune of General Benjamin Butler, the only man to ever turn down the vice presidency—and lose the presidency as a result. In 1864, Lincoln, in search of a “War Democrat,” preferred General Butler to be his running mate and instructed former secretary of war Simon Cameron to pay him a visit. Butler, who later become governor of Massachusetts, wondered why anyone would possibly want to be vice