Just finished reading: 1920

With everything going on, I wasn’t sure what to read next and considered a few different books in my pile. I landed on 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza because:

100 years ago was a perhaps a decent escape from current events
1920s typography is fun!
It’s been in my pile for a long time
I had a blast doodling my way through Pietrusza’s book Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR's 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal. OK, maybe not a blast. There were a lot of hateful characters that I couldn’t wait to escape. I learned and doodled a ton, including perhaps my very favorite presidential fact EVER. (Flip through my sketchbook for more.)
I happened to run into the author IRL! And he pointed out that I happened to be carrying a bag given out the last time I saw him, at FDR Presidential Library and Museum’s Roosevelt Reading Festival.

Obviously, this was meant to be.

Flip through my sketchbook.

Then scroll through a random collection of doodles inspired by 1920. It was a tremendous effort to cut down 27 pages of doodles into a single post. This book was captivating. I went off on so many tangents digging into events further. There were a lot of jaw-on-the-floor feather-duster-in-the-air moments.

You’ll see.

Cousins!!

Fell down a rabbit hole and got a bit disoriented. Again. But seriously. Can you imagine ruling a country? While your first cousin rules a different country? And a different first cousin is married to someone ruling a different country? It's madness. No wonder I got lost.

NOTE: If you keep following the trail down through King George V, you get to Queen Elizabeth. If you follow the trail through Alice (by way of her daughter Princess Victoria), you get to Prince Philip. Then ultimately King Charles. I left some breadcrumbs.

Can we all take a moment to appreciate the Kaiser’s twitching ‘stache?

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Resignation scheme

If Charles Evans Hughes won the 1916 presidential election, President Woodrow Wilson had a cockamamie scheme to get Hughes into office sooner. (Back then, there was a long gap between the election and inauguration.)

*”Bada bing bada boom” was first used in the 1950s, so… not by Wilson.
**Hughes didn’t say “Huzzah”. I don’t even think he knew about the scheme.

PS My uncle Mike recently suggested I do something with Charles Evans Hughes, so I was thrilled when he popped up. He’s from Glens Falls, was NY governor, Harding and Coolidge’s Secretary of State, and Chief Justice (nominated by Hoover; taking Taft’s seat). Hughes. Not Uncle Mike.

Four years later…

When Harding was elected, William Jennings Bryan suggested that President Wilson resign, making VP Thomas Marshall president, who would then appoint Harding as Secretary of State, then President Marshall would resign and ✨ta-da!! ✨Harding would be president!

Wilson wasn’t having it.

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The equality of nations

During peace talks following WWI, Japan’s Baron Nobuaki Makino talked of the “equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations”… you know, “legal and just treatment in every respect, making no distinction, either in law or fact, on account of their race or nationality.”

That made Uncle Sam a little twitchy because Jim Crow and Chinese Exclusion Act et cetera et cetera.

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Lord Lingerie

With a name like that, I had no choice but to look him up. Not sure what I expected, but this was not it. Of Calvin Coolidge, he said “This entire absence of effort to impress me was different from the action of any politician that I had ever met, and it finally interested me enough that I had to look him up.”

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FDR’s mom was much younger than his dad

This was news to me and I think this 26-year age gap explains a lot.

James Roosevelt I was a 52-year-old who was widowed a few years prior
Sara Ann Delano was 26… a year older than her new stepson, “Rosy” (James Roosevelt Roosevelt. Not a typo. It’s not quite like Doctor Doctor Bliss. More like Philip Philip Livingston.)

PRO TIP! Timbeeeeer!

I loved this book. It made me laugh. It was fun to draw. It had me on the edge of my seat. With my mouth open in disbelief. I learned a ton. But if you need a drinking game to keep you interested, may I suggest looking for the phrase “presidential timber”. Everyone seemed to be made of it. Except Major General Wood (below). If anyone should be made of presidential timber, Wood should. Coulda wooda shoulda.

One of my favorite sentence in the book: “Like Napoleon at Moscow, he had come a long way, but it was getting cold and where would he go from here?”

Walter Reed was a real person, America First, and J. Edgar

Obviously General Walter Reed was both a real person and an army physician, but I’d never thought about it or him. His story is pretty interesting and I want to know more.
Confession: I thought this campaign button said “America’s First Johnson for President” and was perplexed because, hello, Andrew Johnson. And he was terrible. Furthermore, why would “Johnson” be a selling point anyhow? The button actually said “America First / Johnson for President” because Johnson, who looked “like a bad-tempered baby” who “would have enjoyed the French Revolution” was an isolationist.
J. Edgar Hoover used to be a librarian and made a card catalog to track more than 200,000 radicals when he was in charge of the anti-radical general intelligence division.

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McKinley’s Avenger

John Flammang Shrank considered himself President William McKinley’s “avenger”, so he shot Theodore Roosevelt.

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Robert Livingston Beekman

Related to the other Roberts Livingston (you know: The Elder, Of Clermont, The Chancellor, and The Judge).
Before he was governor of Rhode Island, he competed in the Grand Slam and his uniform was fantastic. If he had a Robert Livingstonesque nickname, perhaps it could have been The Banded, The Barred, The Ruled? The Striped? The Lined? Open to suggestions.

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I didn’t notice my spelling error until I typed up this quote. That’s ok. I am the Greatist Living Champion of Typos in the World.

The Greatest Living Champion of Water in the World

After downing three pitchers of water during a one-hour speech, William Jennings Bryan declared “I am the greatest living champion of water in the world and I have a right to drink all I want.”

Okie dokie.

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McAdieu and Coxsure

Presidential contender James M. Cox’s team gave out brilliant little cards that said “McAdieu” (a knock at President Wilson’s son-in-law and Secretary of the Treasury, presidential aspirant William Gibbs McAdoo). I was bummed not to find an actual card to doodle. But then I found a “Coxsure” button and that fixed everything.

PRO TIP! The VP slot is not a safe place to stash troublemakers.

Ridding New York of troublemakers by putting them on the ticket almost never backfires. Except when it does.

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Worth repeating

Before America was America and when it was just a lil’ bitty baby America, women could vote in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. And then they couldn’t. I recently brought up my frustration with the “it’s just four years” argument. It’s worth mentioning again, but with anthropomorphized states.

Alice Duer Miller (writer, poet, suffragette) wrote a fabulous poem outlining Why We Don’t Want Men to Vote. My favorite line: “Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.” She also wrote Why We Oppose Pockets for Women.

The electoral college is dumb.

People without the right to vote were still counted as people when the states doing the math to determine electoral college and congressional might, which gave extra power to states where only white guys could vote. Yet another reason why the electoral college is dumb.

If election results were based on, oh, voters Charles Evans Hughes would have beaten Wilson. And that would mean:

Taft would lose his spot as the last president with facial hair.
Who knows if Hughes would still have been appointed to the Supreme Court, but if so — that would mean that Taft was no longer the only former president to serve as Chief Justice.
Both the president and VP (Charles Warren Fairbanks) would have been named Charles! Which got me thinking, but no… it wasn’t the first time. We had Johns (as in Quincy Adams and Calhoun). Alas, Wilson and Thomas Marshall won. But guess what?! Woodrow Wilson’s real name is Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Essentially, we had the Thomases vs the Charleses.
If the Charleses were in charge, that would only be the third time a VP served under different presidents:
- Fairbanks was Theodore Roosevelt’s VP
- John Calhoun and George Clinton both served under two presidents
Fairbanks died in 1918. If elected (and assuming he still died then), he would died in office … meaning that Taft’s VP James Sherman would no longer be the most recent VP to die in office. The aforementioned George Clinton also died in office.
That would also mean that between 1905 - 1933, more than half of the vice presidents would have been named Charles!
- Charles Fairbanks
- [James Sherman]
- Charles Fairbanks again (non-consecutively)
- [Calvin Coolidge]
- Charles Dawes (“1/8 Kaw Indian and a 100% Republican”)
- Charles Curtis (composed a #1 pop hit and also won a Nobel Peace Prize; Bob Dylan was the only other to achieve both of these things. But was he ever vice president? No. No, he was not.)

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Feather duster, wastebasket, piano stool, kisses, and a duck

What is “Things thrown in this book”.

Carrie Phillips, one of Harding’s many mistresses, showed up when Harding campaigned on his front porch. Florence Harding threw a feather duster at her. Then a wastebasket. And a piano stool.

Duck!

Jake Hamon, married and in line to be Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, had a not-so-secret affair with a much-younger Clara Barton Smith. He had his nephew marry his mistress (as one does), then sent his nephew far away to the West Coast.

Harding told Hamon to knock it off. Clara was piiiiissed and hurled a duck at Hamon. I assume a dead and cooked duck, but I didn’t verify the details. She also demanded money. He hit her with a chair. She shot him. He died four days later.

Harding said “Too bad he had one fault, that admiration for women.”

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To the limit

In an effort to get a handle on the “vice and depravity” happening at a Newport Navy base, they set up a sting operation using 41 sailors to entrap gay men. Ten of those recruited were teenagers, some as young as 16. They were directed to “use your judgement whether or not a full act is completed. If that being the fact, it might lead to something greater.” They were encouraged to go “to the limit”.

I have been rendered speechless.

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The ice man, the milkman, the grocerman

Newly-elected Vice President Calvin Coolidge wrote to his father: “your dog is growing well. She has bitten the ice man, the milkman, and the grocerman. It is a good way to get even with them for the high prices they charge for everything.”

Good stuff. But may I recommend that the dog instead should have bitten Charles M. Morse? If you're mad about ice prices, that’s a guy more deserving of blame than the delivery guy.