History Buff's Guide to the Presidents Read Free

his dream job of chief justice of the Supreme Court. A youthful Richard Nixon went from new hire to junior partner in a California firm in just two years. William Clinton achieved success as the attorney general of Arkansas, which he used as a springboard to the governorship.
    Reflecting an increasingly litigious society, the West Wing is perpetually occupied by attorneys, but most of them are now staff members. Overall, lawyer-presidents are on the decline. In the 1800s, there were twenty presidents who had studied for the bar. In the 1900s, only seven had practiced professionally. 3
In a law career that spanned a quarter century, Abraham Lincoln worked more than five thousand cases.
    3 . STATE LEGISLATOR (22)
WASHINGTON, J. ADAMS, JEFFERSON, MADISON, MONROE, J. Q. ADAMS, VAN BUREN, W. H. HARRISON, TYLER, POLK, FILLMORE, PIERCE, BUCHANAN, LINCOLN, A. JOHNSON, GARFIELD, T. ROOSEVELT, HARDING, COOLIDGE, F. ROOSEVELT, CARTER, OBAMA
    The axiom “All politics is local” certainly applied to the early Republic. Counting Washington and Adams, who served when their homes were still colonies, seventeen of the first twenty-one presidents worked as state legislators.
    Their power, relative to the federal government, was exceptional. For more than seventy years, there was no such animal as the Internal Revenue Service; income taxes were paid to the state. No federal paper currency was then in use; everyday scrip bore the names of local banks, trusts, and states. Taken together, state militias always outnumbered the regular army, and there was no national draft. It was said that a person’s exposure to the federal government began and ended with the post office. Americans even acknowledged the relative power of states by referring to their country in the grammatically correct fashion, “The United States are…”

    Prior to his service in the White House, James Buchanan had been a lawyer, Pennsylvania legislator, U.S. Representative, Andrew Jackson’s minister to Russia, U.S. Senator, James K. Polk’s secretary of state, and Franklin Pierce’s ambassador to London.
    Ironically, that all ended with the “War for States’ Rights.” The sheer magnitude of the conflict forced the federal government to exercise its powers over the states like never before. The national budget exploded to thirty times its yearly average, and the army grew sixty times its normal size. Congress and the president imposed a national draft, a national railroad, federal income tax, the abolition of slavery, plus hundreds of other laws and measures. Washington truly became the center of government.
    Consequently, candidates with ambition began to forgo grassroots politics for higher offices. Only five men born since the Civil War have risen from state houses to the White House. Calvin Coolidge was the last state representative to do so, and Barack Obama was a state senator.
In 1784, a signer of the Declaration of Independence lost a Virginia state congressional race to a wealthy planter. Each had a son who also went on to serve in state legislatures. Over time the two boys would run together for the White House under the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”
    4 . GOVERNOR (20)
JEFFERSON, MONROE, JACKSON, VAN BUREN, W. H. HARRISON, TYLER, POLK, A. JOHNSON, HAYES, CLEVELAND, McKINLEY, T. ROOSEVELT, TAFT, WILSON, COOLIDGE, F. ROOSEVELT, CARTER, REAGAN, CLINTON, G. W. BUSH
    Four distinct waves of governors have rolled into the White House, and all came in times of relative peace. From the end of “Mr. Madison’s War” in 1815 to the start of “Mr. Polk’s War” in 1846, six of the seven presidents had been state or territorial governors. After the Spanish-American conflict, it was four of four (counting Taft’s civil governorship in the Philippines). Between the world wars, there was Lieutenant Governor Harding of Ohio, Governor Coolidge from Massachusetts, and New York’s Franklin Roosevelt. After the fall of Saigon, four of the next five presidents