Showing posts with label Things They Loved. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Things They Loved. Show all posts

10 Things James Monroe Loved


Don't underestimate "The Last of the Cocked Hats."
James Monroe might be the most experienced and least appreciated president ever. I'll do my best to honor the overlooked memory of the fifth president with this list of ten things he loved.

8 Things James Madison Loved


Some of Little Jemmy's favorite things
James Madison was notoriously private, and his legacy is usually defined by his fatherhood of the Constitution. As important as that is, I'm much more intrigued by the passions that breathe life into his stuffy portraits and his stern little action figure.

These are eight of the things that James "Little Jemmy" Madison loved.

#1

10 Things Thomas Jefferson Loved


       "He could not live without something to love." 
              –Margaret Bayard Smith, on Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson had more passions than most people have socks. As I move forward on my presidential biography quest, I bid adieu to Mr. Jefferson by looking at just ten of the many things he loved.

#1

I hate to break it to conservatives, but Jefferson was a bona fide tree-hugger. He planted over 160 species of tree at Monticello and was dubbed the “father of American forestry.”

He wished the government could protect trees more than the law allowed at the time. “The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries,” he said, “seems to me a crime little short of murder, it pains me to an unspeakable degree.”

#2

Jefferson collected Jameses like Ben Affleck collects Jennifers. Two of his closest friends and protégés were fellow Virginians James Madison and James Monroe. Both had indispensable impacts on his legacy.

Madison helped him form the Democratic-Republican Party, the nation's first political party and the ancestor of today's Democratic Party. Monroe helped him broker the Louisiana Purchase, more than doubling the size of the United States at the bargain price of four cents an acre.

Jefferson’s friendship and support helped both Jameses succeed him as president, maintaining the Virginia Dynasty for 24 straight years.

#3

A pet mockingbird named Dick was Jefferson’s “constant companion,” following him around the White House and even taking food from his lips. Margaret Smith wrote, “Often when he retired to his chamber it would hop up the stairs after him and while he took his siesta, would sit on his couch and pour forth its melodious strains. How he loved this bird!”

Dick was his favorite, but Jefferson loved all mockingbirds. When he heard the species reached Monticello in the wild, he wrote:
“Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.” 
I'm not sure if those kids grew up with a healthy respect for mockingbirds or in sheer terror at the mere thought of the winged demons, but Virginia's mockingbird population flourished.

#4

Actually, Jefferson loved casual everydays. After visiting the White House a French ambassador wrote, “Mr. Jefferson has put aside all showing off. He greets guests in slovenly clothes and without the least formality.”

Jefferson often wore a frock coat and bedroom slippers, looking more like The Dude from The Big Lebowski than a president. This was a mixture of his Virginia upbringing, which emphasized intellect and manners over ostentatious dress, and a conscious decision to throw out the stuffy trappings of Washington and Adams’s administrations.

#5

Thomas Jefferson knew how to throw a party. He was a poor public speaker, but he shone as a conversationalist at his intimate dinner parties, which one guest referred to as “a mental treat.” Aside from the obligatory delicious food and wine, Jefferson’s parties had three rules: 1. No healths (long boring toasts) 2. No politics and 3. No restraint.

Jefferson also used his soirees for political gain. Author Jon Meacham wrote, “It tends to be more difficult to oppose – or at least to vilify – someone with whom you have broken bread and drunk wine. Caricatures crack as courses are served; imagined demonic plots fade with dessert.” His plan worked, as Senators opposed to his agenda were heard saying “the President’s dinners had silenced them.”

#6

Jefferson loved macaroni (he called all pasta “macaroni” in the same weird way Brits call all desserts “pudding”) and helped popularize it in America at his famous dinner parties. The inventor even drew up specs for a macaroni machine along with a recipe for pasta. To give you an idea of how Thomas Jefferson's mind worked, this is one of the ingredients of his pasta: 2 wine glasses of milk.

A White House guest in 1802 described Jefferson’s macaroni: “It was an Italian dish, and what appeared like onions was made of flour and butter, with a particularly strong liquor mixed with them.” Like I said, the dude knew how to throw a party.

#7

One of Jefferson's greatest loves was the home he painstakingly designed, and never stopped redesigning. Monticello was a work in progress for over 50 years. “Putting up and pulling down is one of my favorite amusements,” he said.

He obsessed over its details – double doors where both opened when you pushed on one, a dumbwaiter inside a fireplace – and he had written plans with measurements to an impossible-to-measure one millionth of an inch. “I suspect it was just a kind of intellectual exercise,” Monticello’s architectural conservator Bob Self said. “There isn’t anything else it could be really.”

Built on a mountaintop (Monticello is Italian for little mountain), it allowed Jefferson to look down at the surrounding landscape like a god. “And our own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye?" he wrote. "Mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms!”

Today Monticello is the only house in the United States designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

#8

No love could rival Jefferson's late wife Martha, but one came close. After four years of grieving Martha's loss, Jefferson met Maria Cosway in Paris and described her as “the most superb thing on earth.” Multi-talented like himself, she was a skilled painter who spoke several languages and played and composed music. She was perfect, except for the minor inconvenience of having a husband. Good thing this was France.

Maria inspired Jefferson to write a 4,000 word love letter with his left hand, after he mysteriously broke his right wrist, likely in her company. "How the right hand became disabled would be a long story for the left to tell," he told a friend. "It was by one of those follies from which good cannot come, but ill may." Oh Jefferson, you coy cuckold-maker.

Upon leaving France Jefferson wrote Maria, “I am going to America and you are going to Italy. One of us is going the wrong way, for the way will ever be wrong that leads us further apart.” They continued their correspondence for the rest of Jefferson’s life, each keeping a painting of the other in their homes.

#9

Jefferson once told John Adams, “I cannot live without books.” He fell in love with reading as a child and developed an addiction to buying books to feed his insatiable thirst for knowledge.

His collection came in handy after the War of 1812 when the British burned the Capitol Building and its 3,000 volume library. He offered to sell his library to Congress, but they almost turned him down because Federalists feared Jefferson's books might spread his “infidel philosophy.” Good sense prevailed, and Congress more than doubled its library when Jefferson’s 6,707 books were delivered.

#10

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went from being BFFs to arch-rivals and back like a pair of soap opera divas. They worked together on the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and were practically family while diplomatting together in France, but everything fell apart during Washington’s first administration.

Vice-President Adams seemed to favor some monarchical ideas, which Secretary of State Jefferson considered a vile threat to keeping power in the hands of the people. These differences culminated in one of the bitterest elections in American history, which Jefferson called the “Revolution of 1800.” Jefferson beat the incumbent Adams, and Adams skipped out on Jefferson’s inauguration. The two did not speak for 12 years and never saw each other again.

Then in 1812 their mutual friend Dr. Benjamin Rush orchestrated a rekindling of their friendship. “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other,” Adams wrote Jefferson. 

The old men exchanged 158 letters about everything from books, family, politics, education, and religion, to their roles in the American Revolution. The renewed correspondence lasted the rest of their lives. The Founding Frenemies died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson loved far more than these ten things – his family, wine, science, France, horseback riding, the violin, and contradicting himself, to name just a few – but all those things are hard to illustrate with a doll whose knees don't bend. I'm sure I'll revisit Jefferson as my future plodding explores his legacy on the country and slavery, but for now it's time to move on to his protégés, James I and James II.



You may also like:
10 Things George Washington Loved
8 Things John Adams Loved
8 Things James Madison Loved


Sources:
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
The First Forty Years of Washington Society by Margaret Bayard Smith
Monticello.org 
John H.B. Latrobe and His Times (1803 - 1891) by John E. Semmes
At Home by Bill Bryson

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8 Things John Adams Loved


As I read these presidential biographies, I try to understand each man by discovering what drove him. Then I try to recreate those things with toys, because that's what drives me

These are 8 things John Adams loved.

#1


He was the “father of the navy” and a leading voice in the war for independence, but deep down, John Adams was a peace-loving hippie. He loved peace so much he referred to his diplomatic notes from Europe as his “peace journal” and he named his farm “Peace Field.”

As much as he loved peace, the country was being sucked into war during his presidency. The final straw was known as the XYZ Affair. France demanded bribes from US ambassadors to restart diplomatic relations after the French Revolution X, Y, and Z were the codenames for the French extortionists. This insult riled up America's hatred for France, and Adams was never more popular than when he was making a strong case for war against the French Republic. 

But he threw it all away when he took a chance to negotiate without bloodshed. Avoiding a devastating war is now seen as one of the best things he ever did, but back then his supposed flip-flop sent him packing after one term, right back to his Peace Field.

#2


What did this dirty hippie grow in his Peacefield? Hemp, of course.
"Hemp is a Plant of great Importance in the Arts..."                                                                    -John Adams
He added, “and Manufactories, as it furnishes a great Variety of Threads, Cloths, and Cordage” but it’s a much better soundbite if you don’t read the whole sentence. Fabric and rope are great and all, but I'd like to imagine the often-prescient John Adams was talkin' 'bout rock and roll.

There is actually zero evidence that Adams smoked marijuana, but he was a huge proponent of hemp and wrote about its uses and intricate cultivation process: “When it has been well beaten, it must be heckled, or passed thro a toothed Instrument…to seperate the shorter Tow, from that which is fit to be spun.” Adams knew that if you wanted good hemp, you had to physically assault and ridicule it.

#3

  
If not stoned, John Adams may have at least started each day with a nice buzz. He drank a tankard of cider every morning and often wrote about how he missed it when he couldn’t get it. This wasn’t Mott’s Apple Cider, either. We’re talking the hard stuff. Cider was more popular and available than beer at the time and safer to drink than water, which contained harmful bacteria.

Still, this was what he did in the morning. Why would he stop there? After breakfast it was 5 o'clock somewhere so he probably broke into his favorite Madeira wine. I don't know how anyone got anything done back then.

The constant drinking would be comical if it weren't for the fact that John's son Charles died of alcoholism at age 30. Maybe having booze for breakfast every day doesn't set the best example. Then again, his other son John Quincy went on to become the sixth president of the United States and worked as a Congressman until his death at 80. John himself lived to 90.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you're going to drink something every day, you could do worse than cider.

 #4

In vino veritas is Latin for “in wine, truth.” It might apply to cider too, since John Adams deeply valued truth and it flowed freely from his mouth and pen.

He considered “honesty, sincerity, and openness” to be “essential marks of a good mind,” and he believed men should “avow their opinions and defend them with boldness.” That belief perfectly captures the best and worst of John Adams, as he was a world-class avower of his opinions, both popular (George Washington should lead the Continental Army!) and unpopular (the president needs a fancy title like His Highness!).

His honesty and boldness made him a good friend and a fantastic political philosopher, but a pretty mediocre politician.

#5

John Adams looked at the margins of his beloved books the same way he probably looked at people taking a breath – as an opportunity to interject his thoughts. The books in his library are filled with his handwritten reactions to the authors, and some have more than a thousand of his own words added.

He treasured his volumes and the joy they brought him. During one of his many separations from his family, he wrote “But above all except the wife and children I want to see my books.”


But you can see the ^except the wife and children part was actually an afterthought. Nice save, John.

He once told his son, John Quincy, “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.” That’s such a beautiful thought it inspires me to want to carry a book of poetry around. But then I remember I have an iPhone. You will also never be alone with a constant supply of cat videos. 

#6

John Adams was a bookworm and an earthworm who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He didn’t have slaves to work his land; he worked his New England farm with his own hands and he loved it.

As a young boy, John hated school and told his father he wanted to be a farmer like him. His dad took him out to help cut thatch along the muddy creek. At the end of the hard day he asked John how he liked being a farmer. John answered, “I like it very well.” His father responded, “Aya, but I don’t like it so well, so you will go back to school today.” John said he went “but was not so happy as among the creek thatch.”

As an adult, his farm was his pride and joy. He mended fences, dug stumps, cut ditches, planted crops, and carted dung. Oh yeah, he loved manure it was a relatively new fertilizer at the time and he wanted the best. He even wrote a recipe for it in his diary. Apparently good manure was only about 30% dung. I’ll spare you a picture of that.

#7


John Adams had a love-hate relationship with himself. Mostly, he hated that he loved himself so much. He called vanity his “cardinal vice and cardinal folly.” By vanity he meant pride and conceitedness, not his physical appearance. When he looked in the mirror he only saw weakness: “My Eye, my Forehead, my Brow, my Cheeks, my Lips, all betray this Relaxation.” 

But he always saw a greatness within. In 1760 he predicted, “I never shall shine, till some animating Occasion calls forth all my Powers.” He was right, and in 1779 he wrote what has become my favorite quote of his:
“Some great events...have at Times, thrown this Assemblage of Sloth, Sleep, and littleness into Rage a little like a Lion.”
This quote makes me identify with John Adams on a deeper level than I ever thought possible. I want to start a band called Assemblage of Sloth and play a cover of Katy Perry's Roar dedicated to John Adams. Then I want to start another band (a side project) and call it Rage a Little Like a Lion, and we would play the same song, only... faster. That is how much I love this quote.

#8


More than his manuscripts, his marijuana, his manure, and his own mighty mind, John Adams loved his "Miss Adorable," Abigail.

Abigail Adams served as a lover, supporter, confidant, adviser, and calming influence on her tempestuous husband. “You who have always softened and warmed my Heart,” he told her, “shall restore my Benevolence as well as my Health and Tranquility of mind.” She made him a better man.

He once wrote to her, “You bid me burn your Letters. But I must forget you first.” John did not burn her letters – he preserved more than a thousand of their exchanges, ensuring future generations would know what an intelligent and amazing woman she was.

On a personal note, I'd like to think I know how John felt. My own heart-softening wife, Jess, is my confidant and the calmer of my storms. I love her like John loved Abigail, and I'm thrilled she'll be my partner in raising the little girl we’re expecting later this year. 

Together those two ladies will surely make this assemblage of sloth and sleep roar.  



You may also like:
10 Things George Washington Loved
10 Things Thomas Jefferson Loved 
8 Things James Madison Loved



Sources: John Adams by David McCullough 
http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/


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