Unfinished Terms of Vice Presidents
So far there have only been three ways to get out of being the vice president of the United States, once you've taken the oath: die, resign or...become the president. This Who2 loop tells the stories of those men who stood "a heartbeat away" from the presidency for less than their full terms:
George Clinton (b. 26 July 1739 d. 20 April 1812) had served as Thomas Jefferson's vice president and was in his 70s when he took office under President JAMES MADISON in 1809. He died in office in 1812 and was replaced by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry. Gerry's name spawned a political term that has outlasted any accomplishments the man ever had: when a map showing a re-shaping of Massachusetts legislative districts was said to look like a salamander, the term "gerrymander" was coined, supposedly by famous portrait artist Gilbert Stuart. Although Governor Gerry initially opposed the redistricting scheme, he eventually signed the bill and has forever been associated with it. Like Clinton, Vice President Gerry wasn't able to serve his full term under Madison. He died after only 20 months in office, on November 23, 1814.
South Carolinian JOHN C. CALHOUN was Vice President under President John Quincy Adams from 1825 to 1829. He then served in the same post under ANDREW JACKSON during Jackson's first term, from 1829 to 1832. Calhoun and Jackson didn't agree on states' rights issues, however, and at the national convention of the Democratic Party Martin Van Buren was picked to be Jackson's running mate. After Jackson and Van Buren won the election, Calhoun resigned on December 28, 1832, shortly before his term expired. Calhoun ended up serving in the U. S. Senate until 1843, when he resigned to serve briefly as Secretary of State under President John Tyler. He returned to the Senate in 1845 and died in office in 1850.
JOHN TYLER himself was a vice president whose term was cut short. Tyler was vice president under WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, the first president to die in office. Harrison contracted pneumonia at his inauguration and died a month later. At the time no provision for actual succession had been created. The Constitution stated that the vice president would assume the duties of the president in such a case, but it didn't explicitly say the vice president would become the new president. Tyler set a precedent: he assumed the duties of the presidency and became the de facto president, taking office April 6, 1841 and serving until March 3, 1845.
President ZACHARY TAYLOR took the oath of office March 5, 1849, with MILLARD FILLMORE as Vice President. Taylor died in office on July 9, 1850 and Fillmore was sworn in the next day as president. He was president until 1853.
William Rufus De Vane King (b. 7 April 1786, d. 18 April 1853) had been a congressman from North Carolina, a senator from Alabama and the American Minister to France before becoming the vice president under FRANKLIN PIERCE. By a special act of Congress, King took the oath of office at the U. S. consulate in Havana, Cuba on March 4, 1853. Six weeks later, on April 18th, King died, before even getting the chance to preside over the Senate.
One of the more famous men to hold the post was Vice President ANDREW JOHNSON, a former U. S. senator and military governor of Tennessee. When ABRAHAM LINCOLN was assassinated on April 15, 1865, Johnson took the office of president, after a mere six weeks as vice president. Famously impeached, tried and acquitted by the Senate in 1868, Johnson was president until 1869. In 1875 the former president was elected to the U. S. Senate once again, serving alongside 14 senators who had participated in his trial (12 of whom had voted against him).
President ULYSSES S. GRANT's second vice president was Henry Wilson (his name at birth was Jeremiah Jones Colbath, b. 16 February 1812, d. 22 November 1875), a U. S. senator from Massachusetts (1855-73) and one of the founders of the Republican party. In May of 1873, two months after being sworn in as Vice President, Wilson suffered a stroke. Although partially disabled, Wilson recovered enough to revive presidential ambitions, and in 1875 began making plans to run against Grant for the Republican nomination. In November his health took a turn for the worse, and he died on November 22, 1875, less than sixteen months before the end of his term.
President JAMES GARFIELD and Vice President CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR took their oaths of office on March 4, 1881. On July 2, 1881, at a railway depot in Washington, D. C., Garfield was shot by Charles Julius Guiteau, a frustrated political aspirant. Garfield lived another 80 days, finally dying in New Jersey on September 19th. The next day Arthur was sworn in as president.
Arthur lost his reelection bid to GROVER CLEVELAND in 1884 (as it turns out, Arthur died less than two years later). Cleveland's vice president was Thomas Andrews Hendricks of Indiana (b. 7 September 1819, d. 25 November 1885), a former congressman, senator and governor. A little more than eight months after taking office, Hendricks died in his sleep on November 25, 1885. For the next three years, there was no vice president, which led to concerns about presidential succession. Way back in 1792 the Presidential Succession Act provided that the Senate's president pro tempore and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (in that order) should be next in line. That was before the emergence of political parties. With the vice presidency vacant, a popularly elected president who died in office could very well be succeeded by a member of the opposition party, and that didn't seem right. Although there was still no specific provision for replacing the vice president, in 1886 the succession law was changed so that cabinet officers got first dibs over congressional members, a system that lasted until 1948.
The election of 1886 paired Ohio's WILLIAM MCKINLEY with New Jersey's Garret Augustus Hobart (b. 3 June 1844, d. 21 November 1899) as the new president and vice president. Hobart had been a successful lawyer and very active in New Jersey Republican politics. As Vice President, Hobart cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate against an amendment to a treaty with Spain that would have guaranteed future independence to the Philippines. Hobart died in office in 1899, just 52 years old, leaving the United States without a vice president as it entered the 20th century. He is considered the first vice president who was actually involved in governing, advising McKinley on policy matters (and also helping the president with his personal investments) and actively presiding over the Senate.
Hobart's death left MCKINLEY without a running mate in the elections of 1900. The party chose New York's Governor TEDDY ROOSEVELT, a reluctant candidate who was pushed into the position by party insiders, some say in an effort to get him out of New York. Roosevelt spent his time as vice president working on his ambition to run for president in the 1904 election. Fate intervened, in the form of Leon Czolgosz, who walked up to President McKinley on September 6, 1901 and shot him. McKinley died eight days later and Roosevelt was sworn in as president on September 14, 1901.
A former congressman from New York, James Schoolcraft Sherman (b. 24 October 1855, d. 30 October 1912) took the oath of office March 4, 1909 as vice president under WILLIAM H. TAFT. Sherman was nominated by the Republicans for a second term as vice president in 1912, his first term scheduled to end in March of 1913. But Sherman died six days before the election, on October 30, 1912, a little more than four months before his first term was up.
The 29th vice president of the United States, CALVIN COOLIDGE, is often contrasted with his president, WARREN G. HARDING. Harding was gregarious and jovial while Coolidge was aloof and reticent, earning him the nickname "Silent Cal." Coolidge had come to national attention while governor of Massachusetts for opposing a labor strike by the Boston police in 1919. He took the oath of office as the Harding's vice president on March 4, 1921. On August 2, 1923, Harding died while in San Francisco, California, and within hours of receiving the news, around 3 a. m. on August 3, 1923, Coolidge was sworn in as president at his family home in Vermont by his father, a notary public and justice of the peace. Coolidge ran for reelection in 1924 and served as president until March 3, 1929.
HARRY TRUMAN was vice president under FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, but certainly not the first one. During Roosevelt's first and second terms, his vice president was John Nance Gardner of Texas. For his third term, in the election of 1940, Roosevelt's vice president was Henry A. Wallace of Iowa. In the election of 1944, the Democrats picked Truman, at the time a U. S. senator from Missouri. On April 12, 1945 Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as president. As vice president, Truman had been unaware of the work on the atomic bomb, yet within four months he was directing the military use of nuclear weapons for the first time in human history. He won reelection by a hair in 1948 and served until January 20, 1953.
On November 22, 1963 stunned Americans watched as LYNDON JOHNSON was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One after the assassination of President JOHN F. KENNEDY. Johnson had challenged Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the presidential election of 1960, ultimately accepting the vice presidential nomination at the national convention. A savvy legislator from Texas (and the first U. S. congressman to enlist after World War II began), Johnson's term as the vice president (20 January 1961 - 22 November 1963) was marked by his loyalty to Kennedy's objectives. Easily re-elected in the election of 1964, Johnson declined to run for office again in 1968 and served as president until January 20, 1969. During his presidency the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified (1967), finally clearing up the order of presidential succession, vice presidential replacement and confirming that the vice president assumes the office in the event of presidential incapacity.
Good thing. In the old days, if the vice president resigned or died, he wasn't necessarily replaced. The 25th Amendment provided that the president would select a new vice president, subject to approval by the legislative branch. Just in time, it turns out. RICHARD NIXON's running mate in 1968 and 1972 was SPIRO AGNEW of Maryland. In October of 1973 Agnew resigned from the vice presidency after being implicated in a bribery scandal (he avoided jail by pleading no contest to charges of tax evasion). Nixon, meanwhile, was in the middle of the Watergate scandal. Had there been no provision for succession, it's possible Nixon would not have appointed a new vice president. Instead, his selection of GERALD FORD was approved by Congress (Ford had been a congressman since 1949), and when Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Ford became the 38th president after less than a year as vice president. President Ford ran for reelection in 1976, but lost to Jimmy Carter.
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