Word: jeffersons
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...national polls place J.F.K. among the three greatest Presidents. That's laughable. Compared with giants like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (the last three on earlier Making of America covers), J.F.K. was a spoiled rich boy who took most of his barely three years in office learning the job, getting little of his domestic program through Congress, having his foreign policy set by trial and (huge) error, and playing politics with civil rights. And he used his power to make sexual conquests...
...host often sat in complete silence. It fell to others to set the table for key compromises in Washington's first term. When the first Congress reached an impasse over two issues--where to locate the permanent capital city and how to pay off the Revolutionary War debt--Thomas Jefferson asked Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to share a meal at which the three men struck a bargain: the Northern states would agree to locate the capital in the South, and the Southern states would assent to the Federal Government's assumption of the debt, even though most...
...President's official entertainments set off an international incident. In 1803, when the new British ambassador, Anthony Merry, and his wife Elizabeth arrived for their first official dinner, Jefferson, no friend of the Crown, determined to insult them. He not only invited their French counterparts, though the two countries were at war, but also escorted Dolley Madison, rather than Mrs. Merry, to the dinner table. The ambassador's personal secretary claimed that the affront caused the War of 1812. Though that's a stretch, "the Merry Affair" certainly contributed to the continued bad blood between the young...
Historically, New York was the cradle of presidential candidates. Two of the first politicians to spot the state's potential were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In the spring of 1791 they took a vacation from their jobs as Secretary of State and Congressman to make a tour of New York and New England, ostensibly to collect botanical specimens but in fact to look for political allies. One they found was the supple young New York Senator Aaron Burr. They might better have left him alone. In the presidential election of 1800, Burr morphed from Jefferson's running mate...
...York's political importance flowed from people, money and publicity. The 1820 census found New York to be the most populous state, while by the mid--19th century New York City had passed Philadelphia and Boston as the financial and media capital of the country. Virginia, cradle of Jefferson and his followers, and Ohio, bastion of the post-- Civil War GOP, have elected more Presidents because of regional ties to a major party during its political heyday, but New York was the battleground state that both parties fought...