Andrew Johnson

This road trip pen-ulminated (I just made that up – blending “culminate” and “penultimate” meaning the one before it ended - if it catches on I'll want royalties or something) in a visit to Andrew Johnson’s grave in Greeneville, Tennessee. Again, I learned more than I thought I could about a former president we don’t often talk about. I’ve taken a lot of history courses, and they either end at the end of the Civil War or they endlessly covered the convoluted political squabbling of Reconstruction, so Andrew Johnson (1808 – 1875) has always been to me a second rate president that lived in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln and failed to bring the country back together again peacefully after the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson’s burial spot is similar to Zachary Taylor, but different because a cemetery did not exist on that spot until Johnson was buried there. He picked a spot he loved in the town he lived for most of his teen and adult life, which later became his family's burial ground. A national military cemetery was built around his hilltop grave site.

Johnson was a true rags to riches story. He was raised by his widowed mother and when old enough (still quite young) he was apprenticed to a tailor in North Carolina. He ran away and eventually ended up in Greeneville, TN where he opened shop as the town’s tailor.

He was a great orator (which in the day was apparently all that was needed to rise through the ranks of politics) and because he was a southerner opposed to secession he was chosen by Abraham Lincoln as his running mate. With Lincoln’s death he was made president and even though the war was over he had Reconstruction to deal with.

I get the feeling that he was unpopular because 1. he wasn’t Lincoln; and 2. no answer to how to rebuild the Union would have made everyone happy. Eventually, Congress impeached him (basically, they set him up – a fascinating story, which I had no idea about until I visited his National Historic Site). He was acquitted (not removed from office), finished his term and was elected to the Senate six years later (the only president to make it to Congress after their term ended. He died of a stroke the same year.

As I’ve said before, I picked a great time of year to visit Tennessee. Greeneville is in a beautiful area in the Smokey Mountains, and during my visit the dogwood trees were in full bloom.

The Cumberland Gap

As I continued on my road trip to Tennessee, leaving Kentucky, the day started out very foggy, which made for some cool pictures, and it cleared quickly enough so that it wasn’t too tough to drive through.

I never know what I’ll find on road trips. This time I wandered into the Cumberland Gap.

“From Alabama to Canada the Appalachian Mountains rise in a series of parallel ridges between the eastern seaboard and the continent’s interior. If you were heading west in the days of travel by horse, boat, or your own two feet, crossing points were few and far between.

Mid-18th century explorers following well-worn bison and American Indian trails found their way through the Cumberland Gap.” – from the National Park brochure.

It’s a beautiful part of the country, and although it was fairly early in the season, the trees has just started to turn green, the weather was sunny and cool – just how I like it – it was a nice drive with some interesting things to see.

Also, I drive alone so I’m entertained by what I see on the road. This trip I ran into (not literally) a group of about 10 SUVs traveling together all with carnations taped to their back windows. And what was really strange about it was that they were from different states, including: New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Sadly, I reacted too slow and couldn’t get a pic. But it does make me wonder…

When the weather cooperates it’s definitely fun to drive along the country’s highways seeing what there is to see. I have yet to be bored with one of my road trips visiting the dead presidents.

Zachary Taylor

Something great about this quest to find all the dead presidents is that it gives me an excuse to take road trips to parts of the US I wouldn’t otherwise be visiting. And with each trip I really don’t know what I’ll find when I get to my destination. I do some research as to where I’m headed, but I don’t know for sure what I’ll find (it would take some of the fun out of it if I read about others’ experiences with the same quest – maybe when I’m done I’ll hunt some of them down [on the web, not literally]). Zachary Taylor is a case in point. I knew I was looking for a military cemetery in Louisville, KY. What I didn’t know was that it’s a very small cemetery in a suburban neighborhood. The cemetery had started as the Taylor family plot, and then in 1920’s the Taylor family convinced the federal government to take it over as a veteran’s cemetery.The government does not own the land, but the cemetery is maintained by the veterans’ administration.

The only non-military graves are Taylor family, and it seems like a lot of the military headstones are for men who died in combat and whose bodies hadn’t been reclaimed. Another interesting thing is that in the Taylor family plot is that two of the women are buried as “consorts” to men, not wives – I’m going to have to do some more research on that. I’m also going to have to do some research on some of the veterans buried there; a lot of the stones simply list the names of several men with a date. Usually when you see more than one person on a stone they are either related (which obviously these men are not) or they died together.

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) was the twelfth president of the US and died in office. Known as “Old Rough and Ready” he was a career soldier who spent time in the Mexican War and wars against the Indians in the West. More of a soldier than a politician he didn’t negotiate with the Southern States when they threatened to secede:

“He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons 'taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.'"

Strangely, Taylor said that in 1849, the southern states didn’t actually secede until after Lincoln was elected in 1860 (three presidents later).

After attending 4^th of July celebrations he fell ill and died five days later. There is debate as to what he actually died from, most sources just list “illness”. Some theories include: heatstroke, from spending a day outside in the hot July sun; cholera, from water he drank directly from a pitcher at a reception that day; food poisoning, from the same reception; typhoid fever; and assassination by arsenic poisoning (his body was exhumed in 1991 to solve the mystery of his death and large quantities of arsenic were found).

In the Louisville cemetery Zachary Taylor has a monument, a mausoleum and a tomb in the side of a hill where apparently his body had been held temporarily (much like Lincoln). His monument celebrates his military background more that his presidency. In the mausoleum there are marble sarcophagi for him and his wife, Margaret.

Construction season

Some say that there are actually only two seasons in Chicago: winter and construction. The weather is getting warmer (we got up to 70 today!) so construction of all sorts is starting in earnest.

The first picture shows what they have to do when construction work is over the river. This is a picture of a bridge they've been working on for a while - while men are working over the water there has to be a safety boat, sometimes with someone it it, in the water just in case. To keep it from being stolen off working hours they elevate it with the crane (like they do with generators and other valuable equipment on land based construction sites).

The other picture is a wall of a building I pass, they put up the protective scaffold a week ago (in Chicago, if you're doing any work on a building over a sidewalk you're in deep trouble if pedestrians get hit by debris - some seriously substantial scaffolds go up this time of year), I had no idea what they were going to do to the building.

Then I saw the wall - let that be a lesson, you'll see interesting things if you look up occasionally (remember Murph the Surf!). I figured that fissure would take days to fix - nope, the next picture is from 24 hours later. Now I can't wait to see how they finish they wall - a mural maybe?

Spring in Chicago

Spring in Chicago, flowers are starting to make an entrance against all odds – it’s probably going to snow this weekend.

These daffodils are sprouting in a pile of mulch around some trees that were salvaged from a lot across the street that was paved to make a seating area and walkway in front of Union Station.

The trees were pulled up during construction and carried by barge across the river into a small empty lot between a building and a bridge. They’ve been there ever since, about four years. They seem to be thriving and as shown they are growing in fertile ground, even though it isn’t landscaped in any way.

I wonder what their future holds.