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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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Bio
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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Bio
Ellen Arthur
Chester Alan Arthur’s beloved “Nell” died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880. That November, when he was elected vice president, he was still mourning her bitterly. His grief was the more poignant because she was only 42 and her death sudden. Just two days earlier she had attended a benefit concert in New York City—while he was busy with politics in Albany—a
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Bio
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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Bio
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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Bio
Dolley Madison
Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, the third of Mary Coles and John Payne Jr.’s nine children.1 Dolley was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, where her parents briefly moved to establish a Quaker community before returning to Virginia. Although John Payne owned enslaved people during Dolley’s early childhood, he freed them in 1783. It is unknown where Dolley was
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Bio
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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Bio
Hannah Van Buren
Hannah Hoes was born on March 8, 1783 to Johannes Dircksen Hoes and Maria Quakenbush. Cousins in a close-knit Dutch community, Hannah Hoes and Martin Van Buren grew up together in Kinderhook, New York. Evidently he wanted to establish his law practice before marrying his sweetheart — they were not wed until 1807, when he was 24 and his bride just three months younger. Apparently th
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Bio
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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Bio
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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Bio
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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Bio
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