The administration of Zachary Taylor.
Standing is Taylor; seated are, left to right: William Ballard Preston, Secretary of the Navy; Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior; John Middleton Clayton, Secretary of State; William Morris Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury; George Washington Crawford, Secretary of War; Jacob Collamer, Postmaster General; Reverdy Johnson, Attorney General. (1849)
Below, closeup of Taylor.
Detail view of pictorial envelope denouncing former President James Buchanan. The text reads:
He was elected President by fraud and trickery! Under his administration that Treasury was robbed! Duplicity and cowardice marked his career! finally, he sold his country to a band of Southern conspirators, and now lives to be pointed at with the finger of scorn, by all true men! and will go down to his grave unlamented.
(1861)
Philippines Governor-General William Howard Taft rides a water buffalo. (c. 1903)
President William Howard Taft fights in vain against the physical destruction of the record of his Denver handshake.
Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809
Cast of Lincoln's face, hands, and Lincoln's suit and hat.
Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln hold hands.
"Led By Lincoln's Principles" New York Mail and Express (August 3, 1904)
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress (December 1, 1862)
President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at Love Field, Dallas, Texas (November 22, 1963)
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers the "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. (August 28, 1963)
Top: President John F. Kennedy and Air Force Union of Staff General Curtis LeMay point at a fireworks display staged for the president. (May 4, 1962)
Bottom: Original caption: Swapping his Air Force uniform for a bright sport shirt, General Curtis LeMay, Head of the U. S. Strategic Air Command, sharpens his shooting eye with some target practice at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. LeMay sandwiched in the shooting session during the three-day conference on Defense Matters, at the base. (June 17, 1957)
The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life.
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society—in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."
John F. Kennedy, Remarks at Amherst College in memory of Robert Frost (October 26, 1963)
President Benjamin Harrison passes under arch decorated with portraits of himself and George Washington, Wall Street (April 29, 1889)
Franklin Pierce (photograph, 1851)
He comes before the people of the United States at a remarkable era in the history of this country and of the world. The two great parties of the nation appear--at least to an observer somewhat removed from both--to have nearly merged into one another; for they preserve the attitude of political antagonism rather through the effect of their old organizations, than because any great and radical principles are at present in dispute between them. The measures advocated by the one party, and resisted by the other, through a long series of years, have now ceased to be the pivots on which the election turns. The prominent statesmen, so long identified with those measures, will henceforth relinquish their controlling influence over public affairs. Both parties, it may likewise be said, are united in one common purpose--that of preserving our sacred Union, as the immovable basis from which the destinies, not of America alone, but of mankind at large, may be carried upward and consummated. And thus men stand together, in unwonted quiet and harmony, awaiting the new movement in advance which all these tokens indicate.
It remains for the citizens of this great country to decide, within the next few weeks, whether they will retard the steps of human progress by placing at its head an illustrious soldier, indeed, a patriot and one indelibly stamped into the history of the past, but who has already done his work, and has not in him the spirit of the present or of the coming time,--or whether they will put their trust in a new man, whom a life of energy and various activity has tested, but not worn out, and advance with him into the auspicious epoch upon which we are about to enter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)
James Buchanan, pictured as Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania. (1844)
Turkey and the United States: How They Travel a Common Road to Ruin, Addressed by Way of Warning to President Hayes
Henry Carey Baird (1877)
Face mask of Abraham Lincoln, presumably copy of plaster life mask taken in 1860 by Leonard Wells Volk. (Photographed, Chicago, 1908)
Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King
From the Edison films catalog:
A burlesque on Theodore Roosevelt hunting mountain lions in Colorado and taken from the New York Journal and Advertiser. The scene opens in a very picturesque wood. Teddy with his large teeth is seen running down the hill with his gun in hand, followed by his photographer and press agent. He reconnoitres around a large tree and finally discovers the mountain lion. He kneels on one knee and makes a careful shot. Immediately upon the discharge of his gun a huge black cat falls from the tree and Teddy whips out his bowie knife, leaps on the cat and stabs it several times, then poses while his photographer makes a picture and the press agent writes up the thrilling adventure. A side splitting burlesque. Length 75 feet. $11.25.
[Note: the signs held by the two men read “The Press Man” and “The Photographer"]
(February 1901)
ROOSEVELT: The Peace Victor: The President’s Song
Words and Music by Irvin J. Morgan (1905)
What’s the Greatest Ruler’s Name?
It is Roosevelt, We All Claim!
And He rules the Greatest Nation ‘neath the Sun:
Japs and Russians, All Hurrah!
For our Roosevelt, “Theodore”
Our Beloved President At Washington!
Chorus:
We will raise “Three Cheers,” Hurrah!
For our President, “Theodore”!
For the Japs, and the Russians who flew,
To the Land of the “Red White and Blue”!
We will raise “Three Cheers,” Hurrah!
For our President, “Theodore”!
All Hurrah! For Theodore”!
And the Land of the “Red White and Blue”!
The Mikado, and The Czar,
Are surprised at what we all are;
And they daily ask the question, Can it be;
That the great United States,
Is the Ruler of Our Fates
In these Lands so far across the deep blue sea.
CHORUS
Who was He, who said “Good, Good”?
Who was he, found “Chopping wood”?
Who was He, brought Peace, to Russia and Japan?
Who now has the World’s Renown?
And will wear the Victors Crown?
It is “Roosevelt”
Rise, and Cheer Him, Ev’ry Man!
CHORUS
