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Mary Lincoln
Mary Todd was born on December 13, 1818, in Lexington, Kentucky. She was the fourth of seven children born to Robert Smith Todd and Eliza Ann Parker Todd. Her mother Eliza died when Mary was six years old. Her father, a wealthy businessman and slave owner, remarried Elizabeth Humphreys in 1826. The following year, Mary began attending Ward’s Academy and at age fo
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Bio
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln warned the South in his first Inaugural Address, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you....You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.” Lincoln consider
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Barack Obama
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. Obama faced major challenges during his two-term tenure in office. His primary policy achievements included health care reform, economic stimulus, banking reform and consumer protections, and a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy preventing lesbian and gay Americans from serving
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Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce became president at a time of what seemed on the surface like domestic tranquility. The United States, by virtue of the Compromise of 1850, seemed to have weathered its sectional storm. By following the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce—a New Englander— hoped to prevent another outbreak of that storm. But his policies, far from preserving calm, hastened the disr
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James Buchanan
Tall, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only president who never married. Presiding over a rapidly dividing nation, Buchanan did not quite grasp the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional
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Julia Tyler
Julia Gardiner was born in 1820 to Juliana MacLachlan and David Gardiner, descendent of prominent and wealthy New York families.1 Julia was trained from childhood for a life in society; she made her debut at 15. A European tour with her family gave her new glimpses of social splendors. Late in 1842 the Gardiners went to Washington for the winter social season, and
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Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore became president upon the death of Zachary Taylor in July 1850. Born in upstate Cayuga County, New York on January 7, 1800, Fillmore as a youth endured the privations of frontier life. He worked on his father’s farm, and at 15 was apprenticed to a cloth maker. He attended a local school where he met Abigail Powers, who was 19 years old at
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Lucy Hayes
Lucy Webb was born to parents James Webb and Maria Cook in Chillicothe, Ohio, on August 28, 1831. As a teenager, she took classes at Ohio Wesleyan University and later enrolled in Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College; her graduation in 1850 makes her the first first lady to graduate from college.1 Webb first met lawyer Rutherford B. Hayes on Ohio Wesleyan University’s campus, an
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William Henry Harrison
"Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it,” a Democratic newspaper foolishly gibed about William Henry Harrison “he will sit ...by the side of a ‘sea coal’ fire, and study moral philosophy.” The Whigs, seizing on this political misstep, in 1840 presented their candidate Harrison as a simple fro
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Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767 near Lancaster, South Carolina, to a family of Scotch-Irish immigrants. His father, Andrew, passed away just a few weeks before his son's birth. All three Jackson boys—Hugh, Robert, and Andrew—were raised by their mother Elizabeth. The family settled in the Waxhaws near the North and South Carolina border, where they joined a larg
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James K. Polk
On November 2, 1795, James K. Polk was born in Pineville, North Carolina to Samuel and Jane Polk. The promise of greater economic opportunities and prosperity drew Samuel Polk and his family westward, and they soon settled just south of Nashville, Tennessee. He became a respected community leader, county judge, businessman, and prominent slave owner. Upon his death in 1827, Samuel Polk left
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John Adams
On April 21, 1789, John Adams became the first Vice President of the United States. Over the next twelve years, John and Abigail followed the federal government as it was relocated from New York City to Philadelphia, and finally to Washington, D.C. The constant sojourning in service to their nation was the defining characteristic of the Adamses’ lives.Born on October 30, 1735 in