McKinley altered the role of future vice presidents

In anticipation of the observance of Presidents’ Day on Monday, Feb. 17, we’ll revisit some of the “behind-the-scenes occurrences” associated with U.S. presidents over time. Today’s focus is on William McKinley of Ohio, the 25th president, who served from 1897-1901.

William McKinley Jr. was born Jan. 29, 1843, in Niles, Ohio, near Youngstown in the northeastern section of the state. He was the seventh of nine children born to William McKinley Sr. and Nancy Allison McKinley.

McKinley was the last president to have served in the Civil War, and after the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law and married Ida Saxton in 1871. The couple had two daughters who both died as young children. As a result, Ida McKinley descended into a deep depression, and she developed epilepsy around the same time.

McKinley dutifully and faithfully tended to his wife’s medical and emotional needs for the rest of his life.

 

One of President William McKinley’s greatest accomplishments in the White House from 1896-1901 was to change the role of the vice president…and alter public perception toward the office.

Looking back, the nation’s first vice president was John Adams. He set the tone from the very beginning, calling the vice presidency “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

 

In 1840, the great American orator Daniel Webster (shown below) had an opportunity to become the running mate of Whig party nominee William Henry Harrison of Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Va.

 

Webster, of Salisbury, N.H., turned down the offer, saying, “I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.”

(In the end, Harrison selected John Tyler, also of Charles City County, Va., as his running mate. They were the winning ticket in the election. Harrison caught pneumonia and died after serving just one month as the ninth U.S. president in 1841.)

 

 William Henry Harrison

John Tyler

At the Republican convention in 1896, William McKinley, Governor of Ohio, won his party’s nomination as president, and he was matched up with running mate Garret Augustus Hobart (shown below), a lawyer who had served in the New Jersey state legislature. Hobart had no federal government experience, but it didn’t matter to the delegates. One opined: The office of vice president is considered the “fifth wheel to the executive coach.”

 

McKinley won the election over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. McKinley had been impressed with Hobart and warmed to him quickly. McKinley consulted with Hobart and delegated specific projects to his “new best friend.”

McKinley frequently referred to Hobart as “assistant president.” McKinley also leaned on Hobart for “personal financial advice” and routinely turned over a set portion of his monthly presidential salary for Hobart to invest for him.

Hobart had a fatal heart attack in 1899. He was 55 when he died. McKinley chose not to replace Hobart, finishing his first term without a vice president.

 

McKinley was a shoo-in to be nominated by Republicans for a second term. His new running mate would be Theodore Roosevelt of New York City, a whippersnapper who fashioned himself as a western cowboy. Roosevelt wrestled long and hard with the decision whether to join the McKinley ticket.

While serving as governor of New York prior to the 1900 Republican convention, Roosevelt even commented to the new media: “I would…rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.”

The political theater of this day and age was most intriguing. Roosevelt was encouraged to accept the nomination as vice president by two prominent Republicans who had opposite motives.

U.S. Sen. Thomas C. Platt (shown below) was the “boss of New York Republican politics,” and he felt the charismatic Roosevelt threatened to eat away at his power base. Platt wanted to push Roosevelt out of New York. He determined “the vice presidency seemed like the perfect place to seclude him.” Platt viewed the post of vice president as “a stepping stone into oblivion.”

 

U.S. Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (shown below) from Massachusetts had a dramatically different perspective. He said the surest way for Roosevelt to become president was to first serve as vice president. Lodge viewed the job as “a stepping stone to the White House.”

 

Roosevelt agreed to go to the party’s convention in 1900. After nominating McKinley as the party’s choice for president, delegates began chanting: “We want Teddy.” Platt glibly stated, “Roosevelt might as well stand under Niagara Falls and try to spit water back as to stop his nomination by this convention.”

And so it was. Roosevelt agreed to become McKinley’s running mate, determined to “make the best of it.”

 

Because McKinley had not “warmed up” to Roosevelt like he had to Hobart, the campaign strategy was to send Roosevelt out to make speeches…as far away from Washington, D.C., as possible.

He passed that assignment with flying colors. On the campaign trail, Roosevelt became a “news media darling,” often featured by Finley Peter Dunne, a popular Chicago columnist. He wrote that Roosevelt “ain’t runnin,’ he’s gallopin.’”

 

Voters overwhelmingly marked their 1900 ballots for McKinley-Roosevelt rather than the William Jennings Bryan-Adlai Stevenson ticket.

Roosevelt was 42 when he became vice president. McKinley commented that he felt his new vice president was a tad “impetuous,” so he kept him on a shorter leash than he did Hobart.

 

Everything changed on Sept. 6, 1901, when McKinley was gunned down by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, in Buffalo, N.Y., at the Pan-American Exposition. McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen by a revolver at close range.

One bullet deflected off a coat button and caused a superficial chest wound. The second bullet entered the president’s stomach. McKinley did not die immediately.

Rushed to the makeshift Pan-American emergency hospital, McKinley was operated on by Dr. Matthew Mann (shown below), a gynecological surgeon and the dean of the University of Buffalo Medical School. Mann happened to be at the expo that day and was the first physician to respond to the scene.

 

Ironically, one of the inventions displayed at the Exposition was an X-ray machine; it had been developed six years earlier, but no one thought to use it – prior to the operation or later during the recovery – according to Bob McGlincy, who contributed a recent article to Exhibit City News, a magazine that serves the tradeshow, event, convention and meeting industry.

When Dr. Mann opened up the president’s abdomen, he could not find any bleeding present behind the pancreas, and he decided to close up the president’s abdomen. (No abdominal drains were put in place, which might have pulled out pooling body fluids that often lead to secondary or post-operative infections.)

Initially, McKinley rallied, but “things went south, however, on Sept. 12, when McKinley was diagnosed with heart failure by Dr. Charles Stockton, an internist and professor of medicine at University of Buffalo. Over the next 48 hours, matters only became graver, early in the morning on Sept. 14, 1901, the president expired.

 

At the autopsy, pathologists diagnosed gangrene, or necrosis, of the pancreas and the stomach. An overwhelming infection and severe fluid loss, leading to heart failure, seemed to be the likely cause of death.

Roosevelt took the oath of office later on Sept. 14, 1901. Life under Roosevelt would be far different from life under McKinley.

With the benefit of 105 years of hindsight, the History Channel in 2006 selected the assassination of President McKinley as one of its “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.” At the time, film project director Joe Berlinger told Reader’s Digest magazine that Roosevelt was “one of the great presidents, but he never would have become president on his own.”

“He was being ‘put out to pasture’ as vice president,” Berlinger said. “If it weren’t for an assassin at precisely that time in American history, Roosevelt never would have become president.

“He had a very sympathetic ear for progressive needs at a time when progressivism was very much needed in this country…and fundamentally changed this country.”

 

 

McKinley’s doctors ‘passed’ on using Edison’s X-ray machine

The X-ray machine that was on display at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1901 was designed by Thomas Alva Edison, who was one of America’s premier inventors. 

 

Edison had already improved on its design and sent his most modern X-ray equipment from his modern laboratory in West Orange, N.J., to Buffalo to aid physicians who were treating a gunshot wound suffered by President William McKinley. He was shot in the abdomen by an assassin while attending the expo on Sept. 6, 1901.

Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, close to Lake Erie and near Sandusky. He grew up in Port Huron, Mich., after the family moved there in 1854. Edison was held in high esteem within the scientific community. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording and motion pictures.

Edison’s inventions, which included the phonograph, the motion picture camera and early versions of the electric light bulb, had a widespread impact on the development of the industrialized world.

He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established his first industrial research laboratory at Menlo Park, N.J., where Edison was dubbed the “Wizard of Menlo Park.” He and his team quickly outgrew that facility, causing him to establish a sprawling complex of laboratories and factories in West Orange.

These facilities were described as a place of wonderment in the late 19th century. “Edison’s machinery could produce anything from a locomotive engine to a lady’s wristwatch, and the researchers, chemists and technicians in his employ were fondly known as ‘muckers.’”

The fact that Edison wanted to aid in the care and treatment of President McKinley was well-received by the public.

Yet, the physicians tending to McKinley refused to use Edison’s X-ray machine, for “fear of introducing radiation poisoning.” As it was, gangrene set into the wound, and McKinley died on Sept. 14, 1901, with “Edison’s machine sitting nearby unused.”

 

Once again, Robert Todd Lincoln was on the scene

President William McKinley (shown below) invited Robert Todd Lincoln to attend the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y., as his special guest.

 

By then, the eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, born in 1843 in Springfield, Ill., was a business baron, having avoided being tugged into the political arena.

Robert Todd Lincoln

After President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth (shown below) and died on April 14, 1865, Robert Todd Lincoln left Washington to return to Illinois and study law. He was admitted to the Illinois state bar in 1867 and began practicing law in Chicago.

In 1868, Robert Todd Lincoln married Mary Eunice Harlan (shown below) of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. She was a daughter of U.S. Sen. James Harlan of Iowa and his wife, Ann Eliza Peck Harlan. The Lincolns gave birth to three children.

In 1880, Robert Todd Lincoln served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention that nominated James A. Garfield for president. Upon Garfield’s election, the new president appointed Lincoln as his Secretary of War.

Lincoln was an eyewitness to the shooting of President Garfield on July 2, 1881, and took charge in arranging for the assembly of the medical team to treat Garfield’s wounds. Unfortunately, Garfield’s physicians “bungled his care and treatment,” resulting in the president’s death on Sept. 18, 1881.

Lincoln was the only member of Garfield’s cabinet who was asked to continue during the administration of President Chester Arthur, who was Garfield’s vice president. After completing that assignment, Robert Todd Lincoln left Washington in 1885 to once again resume his law practice in Chicago.

In May 1887, the Toledo (Ohio) Blade may have been the first newspaper to advocate that Robert Todd Lincoln be recruited by the Republicans as president or vice president. Historians said: “He repeatedly disavowed any interest in running and stated he would not accept nomination for either position.”

Yet, his supporters continued to strategize ways to get Lincoln to toss his hat in the ring. One was Washington Duke (shown below) of Durham, N.C., the founder of W. Duke and Sons, a tobacco company founded in 1871, which also employed his sons James, Ben and Brodie. 

 

The company distributed trading cards in 1888, a set of 25 “Presidential Possibilities,” to promote Duke’s Honest Long Cut Tobacco. Each pack of cigarettes contained a collectible trading card.

Robert Todd Lincoln was one of the 25. Artwork was created by The Giles Company, a lithography company in New York City.

 

Lincoln continued voicing his opposition to nomination all the way up to the Republican convention in June 1888. Former U.S. Sen. Benjamin Harrison of North Bend, Ohio (near Cincinnati), finally received the nomination as a compromise candidate.

Harrison (shown below) defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland in the 1888 presidential election and nominated Robert Todd Lincoln to serve as U.S. minister to Great Britain, the most prestigious foreign appointment in the State Department. He accepted that post and served as ambassador from 1889-1993.

Afterward, Lincoln was happy to return to Chicago as general counsel for the Pullman Company, a manufacturer of railroad cars. He succeeded founder George Mortimer Pullman as company president in 1897.

 

In 1901, the Lincoln family spent the summer in New Jersey. As they traveled back to Chicago in early September, they decided to make a stop in Buffalo, to attend the Pan-American Exposition and visit with President McKinley.

As the Lincolns’ train pulled into the Buffalo train station on the evening of Sept. 6, a Pullman employee was waiting and immediately handed Lincoln a telegram that read: “President McKinley was shot down by an anarchist in Buffalo this afternoon. He was hit twice in the abdomen. Condition serious.”

Robert Todd Lincoln immediately went to the home of John G. Milburn, president of the Pan-American Exposition, where McKinley was resting after a seemingly successful surgery to repair internal damage caused by the assassin’s bullets. Lincoln spent a few minutes with the president and was convinced that McKinley would be fine.

Lincoln saw the president again two days later and still believed he was improving, saying, “My visit has given me great encouragement” for McKinley’s recovery. He and his family left Buffalo for Chicago having enjoyed a visit to the Exposition and glad that McKinley was on the mend.

A week later, McKinley was dead of infection. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt had visited the wounded president at the same time as Robert Todd Lincoln the previous week and then departed for a trip to the Adirondacks in northeastern New York state. Roosevelt hurried back to Buffalo and was sworn in as the 26th president of the United States on Sept. 14, 1901.

Shortly afterward, Lincoln sent President Roosevelt a letter that read in part, “I do not congratulate you, for I have seen too much of the seamy side of the Presidential Robe to think of it as an enviable garment.”

Later images of Robert Todd Lincoln.

 

President Garfield’s death stimulated sanitary medical standards

In anticipation of the observance of Presidents’ Day on Monday, Feb. 17, we’ll revisit some of the “behind-the-scenes occurrences” associated with U.S. presidents over time. Today’s focus is on James Garfield of Ohio, the 20th president, who began his term in 1881.

James Abram Garfield was born the youngest of five children on Nov. 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Moreland Hills (Orange Township), located in eastern Cuyahoga County in Ohio, not too far from Cleveland. His parents were Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou Garfield. 

James Garfield married Lucretia “Crete” Rudolph in 1858. Together, they had seven children. Today, their former home in Mentor, Ohio, near Lake Erie, is a National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service.

  

After serving less than four months as U.S. president, James A. Garfield (shown below) was attacked on July 2, 1881, while standing on the platform of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., waiting to board a train.

Charles J. Guiteau fired two shots from a revolver at short range that struck President Garfield in the back. Guiteau was mentally deranged; he reportedly believed he should have been awarded a diplomatic job in Paris, France, by the new Garfield administration.

Garfield’s wounds were serious but not immediately fatal. He languished for 80 days; his death occurred Sept. 18, 1881. Garfield died at age 49.

Medical sources now agree that Garfield could have, should have and would have recovered, had doctors known to follow “a present-day sanitary protocol.”

 

Dr. Howard Markel, professor of the history of medicine and a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (shown below), is a regular contributor to PBS NewsHour. He specializes in highlighting momentous events that have shaped modern medicine. 

Garfield was the second sitting U.S. president to perish following an assassination attack. Gunmen also killed presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), William McKinley (1901) and John F. Kennedy (1963).

Garfield’s attending physician was Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss of Brutus, N.Y. (in the central part of the state near Weedsport.) He was given his first name of “Doctor” by his parents Obediah Bliss and Marilla Pool Bliss.

Dr. Bliss, an acquaintance of President Garfield, had been summoned to the White House by Robert Todd Lincoln (the eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln), who was serving as Garfield’s Secretary of War. (Lincoln recalled that Dr. Bliss was present during the treatment of his father in 1865.)

Dr. Bliss

Robert Todd Lincoln

Dr. Markel said: “President Garfield’s doctors stuck their fingers in Garfield’s wound and probed around, all for naught and without applying the numbing power of ether anesthetic.”

“In late 19th century America,” Dr. Markel said, “a key principle behind the probing was to remove the bullet; it was thought that leaving buckshot in a person’s body led to problems ranging from ‘morbid poisoning’ to nerve and organ damage.”

“Indeed, this was the same method the doctors pursued in 1865” after Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head” using a 44-caliber single-shot derringer pistol during a performance of the comedy “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Markel said physicians caring for President Garfield would “widen the three-inch deep wound into a 20-inch-long incision.”

“This…probably led to an overwhelming infection known as sepsis. It is a total body inflammatory response that almost always ends badly – the organs of the body simply quit working,” Dr. Markel noted.

In Europe, beginning in the late 1860s, British surgeon Sir Joseph Lister (shown below) encouraged fellow physicians to adopt “anti-sepsis” in their operating rooms. This technique required surgeons and nurses to thoroughly wash their hands and instruments in anti-septic chemicals before touching the patient.”

Dr. Lister’s contributions to clinical medicine earned him recognition as the “father of modern surgery.”

His work inspired Dr. Joseph Lawrence of St. Louis (shown below) to develop an alcohol-based formula for a surgical antiseptic and general germicide. He named his antiseptic “Listerine,” in honor of Dr. Lister.

Dr. Lawrence licensed his formula in 1881 (the same year that Garfield died) to St. Louis pharmacist Jordan Wheat Lambert (shown below), who subsequently started the Lambert Pharmacal Company, marketing Listerine. (Listerine brand products were promoted to dentists for oral care in 1895, with the first over-the-counter mouthwash sales occurring in 1914.)

Writing for the White House Historical Association in 2006, Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey, affirmed that “Garfield’s death was a turning point in the history of American medicine. His death spurred positive reforms, furthering the use of antiseptics and sterilization methods.”

Circumstances surrounding “Garfield’s death also helped raise awareness of the lack of trained nursing care in America, resulting in the development of national standards for American nursing schools during a forum held at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago,” added Freidel and Sidey.

To complete the circle, after Garfield’s death, Vice President Chester A. Arthur of Fairfield, Vt., became the 21st American president. He is shown below.

As a tribute to the Arthur presidency, Alexander McClure, editor of the Philadelphia Times, wrote: “No man ever entered the presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired…more generally respected.”

 

Alexander Graham Bell summoned to help save Garfield

Canadians expressed great pride in 1881 when inventor Alexander Graham Bell was asked to assist the medical team caring for U.S. President James Garfield, who was shot in the back during an attempted assassination in Washington, D.C.

                                    Photo of Alexander Graham Bell as a young man.

Although Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Bell family moved to Canada in 1870, acquiring a farm near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, about 25 miles west of Hamilton. It is here in Brantford where Bell invented the telephone.

Bell’s concern for President Garfield’s recovery was documented by Andrew MacLean of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, who writes a syndicated newspaper column named Backyard History to share “forgotten stories from Atlantic Canada’s past.”

“After American President James Garfield was twice shot in the back at a train platform in Washington on July 2, 1881, Alexander Graham Bell tried to save Garfield’s life with a rudimentary prototype he was working on: the metal detector,” MacLean wrote.

President Garfield “was gravely wounded, bedridden and desperately ill.” MacLean said. “For months, newspapers published daily in-depth reports on Garfield’s health.”

“As Bell read the newspaper reports of the physicians’ treatment regimen, he was shocked and appalled. The search with a knife, probing among vital and sensitive tissues, could not be otherwise than painful and dangerous,” MacLean commented. “The thought naturally arose that science should be able to discover a less barbarous method.”

In 1876, Bell had patented the telephone. He established the Bell Telephone Company in 1977.

“While working on the telephone, he’d noticed that bringing metal objects toward his contraption made a sound in the receiver,” MacLean said.

By this time, Bell had also established homes and workshops in America – in the cities of Boston and Washington. Within only a few days, Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter  (shown below) “managed to piece together a rudimentary metal detector,” MacLean wrote.

When bringing a leaden bullet near a small coil, a distinct ticking sound could be heard from the telephone.

Since Bell was at the crest of the wave of his fame, news of Bell’s metal detecting apparatus “attracted widespread media attention,” MacLean noted. “Theoretical experts were summoned from major universities like Harvard, and the enormous battery systems powering the Capitol building were put at Bell’s disposal as he tried to refine his device.”

“By July 22, 1881, the contraption was considered advanced enough to experiment on humans. Wounded American Civil War veterans who had bullets still inside of them volunteered. When testing on them, ‘a feeble sound’ was heard as the device passed over bullet wounds,” MacLean wrote.

Bell’s apparatus was carried to the White House, and President Garfield consented to undergo the noninvasive procedure on Aug. 1. Results were inconclusive, however.

Bell was perplexed, as Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss, the attending physician, refused to step aside. He instructed Bell where to run the coil in search of the bullet along the president’s left side.

Following Dr. Bliss’ directive, Bell was unable to find the bullet with his metal detector. Dr. Bliss responded by promptly dismissing Bell from Garfield’s bedside.

Writing for the New York Post in 2016, correspondent Larry Getlen reported that Dr. Bliss told the press of “Bell’s failure, and newspapers ‘excoriated Bell as a charlatan.’”

Getlen suggested that Dr. Bliss was intent upon sabotaging Bell’s scientific invention as well as Bell’s integrity as a scientist. But why? To shift the focus of blame…and to cover his own behind.

Familiar portrait of Alexander Graham Bell.

The late Fred Rosen, a former New York Times columnist and author, said Dr. Bliss had a history of malpractice violations. “He was excellent at using newspapers to promote his practice and bad at treating his patients. He was a con man.”

After Garfield finally passed away on Sept. 18, 1881, the autopsy showed that the bullet that killed the president was not lodged on the left side of his body (as Dr. Bliss had insisted). The bullet was found on Garfield’s right side (as Alexander Graham Bell had suspected).

The autopsy confirmed that the reason Bell’s invention didn’t detect the bullet inside Garfield was because it had not been placed anywhere near the bullet.

 

James Buchanan tragically lost the love of his life

In anticipation of the observance of Presidents’ Day on Monday, Feb. 17, we’ll revisit some of the “behind-the-scenes occurrences” associated with U.S. presidents over time, beginning with James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, the 15th president who served one term from 1857-61.

James Buchanan Jr. was born into a Scottish-Irish family on April 23, 1791, in a log cabin on a farm called Stony Batter, near Cove Gap in Franklin County, located in the Allegheny Mountains of southern Pennsylvania. He was the second of 11 children and the eldest son of James Buchanan Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth Speer Buchanan.

 

President James Buchanan never married. He is the only bachelor president in American history. Yet, Buchanan was once deeply in love with and engaged to Anne Caroline Coleman.

Their love story and its tragic ending is “one of the strangest mysteries in American history…a tale of blighted romance that ended with a pledge of lifetime bachelorhood by the future president,” said historian Dr. Philip Shriver Klein, a contributor to American Heritage magazine.

In late November of 1819, Anne Coleman bitterly called off her pending wedding with James Buchanan. She died unexpectedly a few days later.

Dr. Klein said: “How different might have been the course of American history had James Buchanan married Anne Coleman and devoted his life to rural domesticity and the practice of law?”

“Anne Coleman was the outstanding ‘catch’ of Lancaster, Pa., in 1819,” Dr. Klein said. “It was for that reason, perhaps, that she was still unmarried at 23. Her wealth and social position were enough to awe the timid; her father’s protective care created a shield against the overzealous.”

“She was…proud, gentle, full of sensibility, lovely in person, tender and affectionate, intelligent and thoughtful,” Dr. Klein wrote. Others said the young woman “was inclined to be high-strung, impetuous and occasionally giddy.”

The community of Lancaster has retained its historic character.

In 1809, Buchanan, at age 17, had moved to Lancaster to practice law, and the “handsome, fair-haired, six-footer began his daily treks past the Coleman home from his law office to the courthouse,” Dr. Klein said. “Little by little, Buchanan worked his way into the confidence of Lancaster society, and at length was admitted to its most exclusive echelon, the iron circle.” 

“By 1819, Buchanan had built a fine reputation in politics and in the law. He and Anne became engaged in the summer of 1819,” Dr. Klein reported. “Buchanan apparently did not spend much time in his courtship. Always conscientious, he consumed his time in business, apparently to the neglect of Anne Coleman.”

About town, “as the teacups clinked, talk inevitably drifted to Mr. Buchanan being something less than an ardent suitor of Anne Coleman…not treating her with the affection she expected.”

When gossip got back to Anne that Buchanan was seen visiting with a younger woman, Anne flew off the handle and “penned an angry note and released him from his engagement.” (As it was, Buchanan was observed paying his respect to a visiting relative of a business associate.)

Anne left town in a huff to go see an older sister in Philadelphia on Dec. 4, 1819. They were to see a series of stage plays at the theater.

“Early morning Dec. 9, the thunderbolt struck. A special messenger brought the shocking news that Anne Coleman had died at her sister’s home,” Dr. Klein said. “The news swept through Lancaster like a soul-chilling wind.”

“It seems certain that Anne Coleman died of an overdose of laudanum, though no one could be sure whether it was taken by instruction, by accident or by intent.”

Buchanan’s reaction was: “I feel that happiness has fled from me forever.”

“From this time forth, politics absorbed his whole life,” Dr. Klein said. “While at first it was chiefly a distraction, an escape, a vindication in his home community, politics at length became his chosen profession, in place of the law.”

“Marriage he purposely shunned throughout the remainder of his life, though there were many who had hopes of leading him to the altar. To such, Buchanan had a standard reply: ‘Marry he could not, for his affections were buried in the grave.’”

The fact that Buchanan preserved Anne Coleman’s love letters throughout his life “suggests that he never fully recovered from the crushing effect of her death,” Dr. Klein said.

These he tied in pink ribbon and endorsed with instructions that upon his death, the letters should be burned without reading. Buchanan died in 1868, due to respiratory failure. He was 77.

President Buchanan’s niece was his White House hostess

Harriet Rebecca Lane, a niece of U.S. President James Buchanan, served as the surrogate “First Lady of the United States” during Buchanan’s single term in the White House from 1857-61. “Old Buck” was a lifelong bachelor, America’s only spouseless president.

Evan Andrews of History.com, reported: “Few first ladies have captured the public imagination like Harriet Lane.” She deserves more that a footnote in American history.

 

Harriet, the youngest of four children, became an orphan in 1941. At age 11, she “attached herself voluntarily” to her Uncle James of Lancaster, Pa., who was at the time serving in the U.S. Senate.

When Harriet’s “favorite uncle and guardian” whom she called “Nunc,” was elected U.S. president, Buchanan invited her to accompany him to Washington, D.C., in 1857 and serve in the role of “presidential hostess.” Harriet was 27; Nunc was 65.

“Miss Lane entered a White House in need of cheer and vitality,” wrote historian Sarah Fling. Her predecessor, First Lady Jane Pierce, spent her tenure at the Executive Mansion in mourning, having lost her only surviving son two months before President Franklin Pierce’s inauguration.”

“In stark contrast, Harriet Lane was a young, single hostess whose charm and intelligence immediately endeared her to the American people.” Fling said.

 

Alida Black of the White House Historical Association said: “The popular Miss Lane flirted happily with numerous beaux, calling them ‘pleasant but dreadfully troublesome.’ Buchanan often warned her against ‘rushing precipitately into matrimonial connections.’”

“She enlivened social gatherings with a captivating mixture of spontaneity and poise.” She filled the White House with gaiety and flowers and showed a great appreciation for the arts.

Harriet Lane also had a flair for women’s fashion and became a trendsetter. The mark of distinction in Harriet Lane’s formal gowns was an unusually low neckline, her bosom line veiled by a strip of lace known as a “bertha.”

 

Harriet Lane, was hailed as the new “Democratic queen” who had enlivened the Washington social scene.

Yet, the political climate during the Buchanan administration was ominous, as the nation was becoming divided over slavery and a host of other issues.

“As sectional tensions increased,” Black said, “Miss Lane worked out seating arrangements for her weekly formal dinner parties with special care, to give dignitaries their proper precedence and still keep political foes apart.”

“Her tact did not falter, but her task became impossible – as did her uncle’s,” Black wrote. “Seven states had seceded by the time Buchanan retired from office in 1861.” They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

Harriet Lane was married in 1866, at age 35…with her uncle’s approval. Her groom was Henry Elliot Johnston, a Baltimore banker and railroad executive.

 

During her lifetime, Harriet Lane Johnston amassed a significant private art collection, which she bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. A museum official lauded Mrs. Johnston as the “First Lady of the National Collection of Fine Arts.”

 

In addition, the Johnston family dedicated a generous sum over the years to endow a home for invalid children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. The Harriet Lane Home became a pioneer pediatric treatment, teaching and research clinic.

 

Today, the Harriet Lane Clinic serves as a training site for medical students, pediatric residents and fellows, who provide comprehensive health care services for approximately 8,500 children and youth each year.

 

The handbook for medical students at Johns Hopkins is named after Harriet Lane Johnston.

After Harriet Lane Johnston died in 1903, the Lancaster Examiner editorialist proclaimed: “If her uncle had done his part as well as she did hers, history of a different sort would be written.”