Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House (1 of 3 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House by Mark Updegrove. Copyright 2006 by Mark K. Updegrove
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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Second Acts - Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House
by Mark K. Updegrove

To my Evie, and our Charlie
And to my parents

INTRODUCTION

In the annals of legend, Cincinnatus, a wealthy farmer who worked his own land in ancient Rome, was called upon to lead his country in battle when a horde of barbarians threatened attack. Unhesitatingly, he took up arms as the leader of the army and triumphed over the enemy after several days of fierce battle. Upon achieving victory, foregoing glory and fame, he returned to his farm where he humbly laid down his sword and once again took up his plow.

George Washington, who emulated Cincinnatus throughout his life, did much the same upon leaving the presidency after two terms in 1797. He gave the office over to his vice president, John Adams, who had won it in his own right, and returned to Mount Vernon, his Virginia farm on the banks of the Potomac River. There he tended to his tobacco, corn, and wheat crops until his country beckoned him once more. At Adams's behest, the duty-bound first president served briefly as the commander in chief of the American military when skirmishes with French ships in the Atlantic meant possible war. When the storm passed, he returned to his fields where he lived his remaining days as a gentleman farmer before passing on to the ages in 1799.
Like so much in the American ideal, Washington set the precedent for his successors, quietly leaving office without meddling in the affairs of the incumbent president, heeding his country's call back to service, and doing nothing to compromise the dignity of the office he had left.

Prior to American democracy, the world was primarily made up of monarchies where kings and queens gave up power only in death, by natural or more sinister forces. While we may take it for granted in the new millennium, a man relinquishing power over his countrymen and systemically giving it over to another was a radical concept when Washington did it on the eve of the nineteenth century. Just as novel was the notion of a supreme ruler in open retirement, relieved irrevocably of the power he once wielded. In other times and places, kings were celebrated as the very symbols of fertility. The idea of a king rendering himself impotent by willingly giving his crown over to another was as foreign as democratic principles in general. Even well into the twentieth century, the bulk of the world's most powerful leaders were appointed for life--unless they were overthrown.
But in America, where power is transferred peacefully as a matter of course--no daggers to the heart, no tanks in the street--a president giving up the power he fought so vociferously to acquire is just part of the bargain.

Forty-three men have taken the presidential oath of office; thirty-four have lived to realize a post-presidency, a natural by-product of the democratic process. At the very least, former presidents provide institutional memory and are powerful symbols, if not of fertility, then of American unity and continuity. Though living succession is no longer unique to the American model, former U.S. presidents, by virtue of the exalted office they held, are a breed apart from their peers in other places in the world. Most presidents who followed Washington into retirement returned to their homes to venerably, if uneventfully, live out their twilight years. There were, however, a number whose lives after the White House were more than just anticlimactic epilogues. In many cases, the lives of ex-presidents have provided a clear glimpse into their character, and have served to underscore their legacies.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both survived long after leaving office and had a direct and profound influence on those who followed them--Jefferson as a mentor and friend to his immediate successors, fellow Virginians James Madison and James Monroe, and Adams as the father of Monroe's successor, John Quincy Adams. After sneaking out of Washington just after midnight on the last day of his presidency, rather than bearing witness to the transfer of executive authority to Jefferson, the elder Adams retired to his native Quincy, Massachusetts, where he lived modestly for a quarter of a century, most of which was spent with his wife Abigail who died in 1818. Jefferson went on to achieve one of his proudest accomplishments: conceiving, designing, and overseeing the University of Virginia, which was established in 1819. His lavish lifestyle presented an enigmatic contrast to his frugal fiscal policy as president.
Expensive French wines and the upkeep of Monticello, his beloved home and architectural masterpiece, threw him into debt, which he alleviated by selling off many of his precious books--until he could take it no more.

In earlier years, during the heady days of the American Revolution, Adams and Jefferson forged an intimate bond and, of course, did much to shape the breakaway colonies into a fledgling republic, including overseeing and drafting the Declaration of Independence. But they were long estranged as a result of bitter political differences by the time Jefferson followed Adams into retirement in 1809. Feeling that they owed it to themselves--and perhaps, to history--to repair their faded friendship, they exchanged a series of remarkable letters beginning in 1813, in which they delicately "explained" themselves to each other as they watched the nation they helped create move forward in the hands of the next generation. As if by divine providence, the withered revolutionaries died on the same day--July 4, 1826--fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed, inspiring Daniel Webster to write, "They took their flight together to the world of spirits."

ENDNOTES (PLEASE BOOKMARK)
http://www.dailylit.com/books/second-acts/notes

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