Hailing the Chief in the Nineteenth Century Quiz

Answer: Zachary Taylor

Throughout the nineteenth century, four presidents died in office either by natural causes or by assassination. However, three of them were first elected twenty years apart, in 1840, 1860 and 1880, respectively. In April 1841, thirty-two days after his inauguration as president, William Henry Harrison dies of Pneumonia.

Elected to a second term in November 1864, Abraham Lincoln becomes the first president to be assassinated while attending Ford's theatre in April 1865. In July 1881, James A. Garfield becomes the second president to be assassinated after being elected in November 1880. Lincoln and Garfield were both assassinated by John Wilkes Booth and Charles Julius Guiteau, respectively.

Elected in November 1848, Zachery Taylor was the only exception to this rule after Taylor dies of Gastroenteritis sixteen months into his term in July 1850.

The twentieth century very much kept the pattern alive when William McKinley (elected in November 1900), Warren G. Harding (elected in November 1920), Franklin D. Roosevelt (elected in November 1940) and John F. Kennedy (elected in November 1960) all died in office.

Answer: John Tyler

Elected to the Vice Presidency in the 1840 election, John Tyler ran as the running mate of Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. Inaugurated in March 1841, Harrison delivers an inaugural address on a day of extremely dire weather without the appropriate clothing. Thirty-two days later, Harrison becomes the first president to die in office, dying of pneumonia.

Following Harrison's death, much confusion followed regarding presidential succession, due to the vagueness of the constitutional provisions regarding presidential succession. Vice President John Tyler was therefore left to set precedent - whether the vice president assumed the Presidency itself, or become acting president. Insisting on the former, Tyler was eventually accepted by Congress as the tenth president after much debate.

Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur all succeeded to the Presidency in the same fashion as Tyler - being the running mates of Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield in the 1848, 1864 and 1880 elections, respectively.

Answer: James K. Polk

Inaugurated in March 1845, James K. Polk becomes the first president to not seek a second term as one of his campaign promises during the 1844 election. Following George Washington's retirement from the office in March 1797 and a peaceful transition of power was established thereafter, every president until Polk sought a second term in office (with the obvious exception of William Henry Harrison).

John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren were all defeated for re-election in 1800, 1828 and 1840 against Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison, respectively. Franklin Pierce sought the Democratic nomination for a second term in the 1856 election but fails to receive it in favour of James Buchanan.

Answer: John Quincy Adams

The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in June 1804, provides that: "The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

The election of 1824 is the second election in the history of the United States to choose its president through the House of Representatives due to the lack of any candidate receiving a majority in the Electoral College, and the first following the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in June 1804.

The election saw the candidacy of Senator Andrew Jackson, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford and Speaker of the House Henry Clay. However, each candidate received ninety-nine, eighty-four, forty-one and thirty-seven electoral votes, respectively.

Due to the failure for any candidate to acquire the necessary one hundred and thirty-one votes out of a possible two hundred and sixty-one votes in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives eventually elected Adams in February 1825 over Jackson and Crawford (The election is best remembered for the so-called Corrupt Bargain between Adams and Clay after Adams appoints Clay Secretary of State).

Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison, like Adams, were elected to the Presidency despite losing the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 elections, respectively (the 1876 election is another very controversial election).

Answer: James Madison

Submitted to the states for ratification in November 1777 in the midst of the American War of Independence, the Articles of Confederation formed the basis of the first national government in the United States. Ratified in March 1781, each of the thirteen states retained much sovereignty from the national government. In September 1783, American independence was achieved with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

However, numerous problems soon hit the government established by the Articles of Confederation, economic and military problems chief among them. For instance, the Congress of the Confederation lacked the power of taxation, and thus the financing of a national military suffered as a result. The sovereignty of each state underpinned these problems, however, eventually leading to the convening of a Constitutional Convention in May 1787, in Philadelphia.

Only two presidents were involved in the drafting of the Constitution as delegates to the convention; George Washington and James Madison, both first elected to the office in the 1789 and 1808 elections, respectively. Madison, with the Virginia Plan, drew up many of the key ideas eventually adopted in the final draft of the Constitution. For this reason, Madison earned the name "Father of the Constitution."

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Inaugurated in March 1861, Abraham Lincoln becomes the first president not to be from any of the thirteen states that declared their independence from Great Britain in July 1776. Both of the Adams' were from Massachusetts, Polk was from North Carolina, Pierce was from New Hampshire, Van Buren and Fillmore were both from New York, Buchanan was from Pennsylvania and Jackson was from South Carolina. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler and Taylor were all from Virginia. Lincoln was from Kentucky, which became the fifteenth state in June 1792.

Article IV, Section III of the Constitution provides that: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

Answer: Secretary of War

Succeeded by James Buchanan in March 1857 after failing to receive the Democratic nomination for a second term in June 1856, Franklin Pierce becomes the first president whose cabinet remained consistent throughout at least one full term. Pierce's cabinet consisted of Secretary of State William L. Marcy, Secretary of the Treasury James Guthrie, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Attorney General Caleb Cushing, Postmaster General James Campbell, Secretary of the Navy James C. Dobbin and Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland.

In December 1860, South Carolina becomes the first of eleven southern states to succeed from the union in response to Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency one month prior. Elected to the Presidency of the Confederate States of America in February 1861, Davis serves as Lincoln's counterpart in the American Civil War.

Fun fact: the President of the Confederate States was elected to a single eligible term of six years and was empowered with the line-item veto (a power not granted to the President of the United States at the Constitutional Convention of 1787).

Answer: John C. Frémont

Introduced to Congress in January 1854 by Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act introduced the concept of Popular Sovereignty: the choice of individual states to decide on slavery, but particularly in the newly-created territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The Republican Party was formed in July 1854 in opposition to the act.

Running for the Presidency for the first time two years later in the 1856 election, John C. Frémont was nominated as the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party. William L. Dayton was likewise nominated as the first Republican vice presidential candidate. However, Frémont was defeated by Democratic candidate James Buchanan in the election.

Inaugurated in March 1861, Abraham Lincoln becomes the first Republican president after being elected in November 1860, along with running mate Hannibal Hamlin. However, due to the anti-slavery policies of the Republican Party, the pro-slavery south seceded one by one to form the Confederacy, thereby setting the stage for the American Civil War.

Answer: Andrew Johnson

Elected to a second term in November 1864 against Democratic candidate George McClellan, President Abraham Lincoln ran on the National Union ticket alongside running mate Andrew Johnson.

Proposed in January 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment provided that: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Assassinated in April 1865, Johnson succeeds Lincoln as president. Abolishment of slavery in the United States was finally achieved in December 1865 with the ratification of the amendment, after nearly a century following Thomas Jefferson's famous passage in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that all men are created equal. Ulysses S. Grant was elected to two terms in the 1868 and 1872 elections and Rutherford B. Hayes was elected in the controversial 1876 election.

Answer: Martin Van Buren

Grover Cleveland is the first president in the history of the United States to be elected to two non-consecutive terms, first elected in November 1884 against Republican candidate James G. Blaine and again eight years later in November 1892 against incumbent President Benjamin Harrison. However, three presidents before him had attempted a non-consecutive term.

Defeated for a second term in the 1840 election against William Henry Harrison, Martin Van Buren seeks the Democratic nomination in 1844 but James K. Polk receives the nomination instead. Running as a third party candidate in the 1848 election as a candidate for the Free Soil Party, Van Buren is defeated by Whig candidate Zachary Taylor in the election.

Millard Fillmore was elected as Taylor's running mate and upon the latter's death in July 1850, Fillmore succeeded to the Presidency. However, the Whig nomination went to General Winfield Scott in the 1852 election instead. Like Van Buren, Fillmore ran as a third party candidate in the 1856 election, as a candidate for the Know-Nothing Party.

Succeeded by Rutherford B. Hayes in March 1877 following the controversial 1876 election, Ulysses S. Grant seeks the Republican nomination for a third non-consecutive term in 1880. However, Grant fails to receive the nomination in favour of Ohio Representative James A. Garfield.