Creative History

He had said to random passersby, “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it.”  Those are the words of unemployed house painter Richard Lawrence on the day that he attempted to assassinate the President of the United States. January 30, 1835 was a cold and misty day in our nation’s capital.  On that day freezing rain hung in the air and dark and ominous clouds encircled the then domeless rotunda of the United States Capitol building.  It would be over another 30 years, after the end of the American Civil War and after another of our nation’s Presidents had been murdered, that the dome on the Capitol building would finally be completed.   But on that day in 1835 then controversial President of the United States Andrew Jackson was on the steps of the Capitol building to attend the funeral of Representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina who had unexpectedly passed away just a few days prior and whose body now lay in state on the porch of the Capitol building. Presid...

            The clouds break and temperatures rise.  Sunlight cascades down upon America’s capital city. It is March 4, 1829--inauguration day for the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson. Jackson, at the head of a brand new political party, won last November’s election in a landslide over incumbent President John Quincy Adams.  It was the second time that Jackson had run for the Presidency against this same adversary. Back in 1824, after winning a plurality of the electoral vote in a four candidate race, Jackson had lost a contingent runoff in Congress for the Presidency to John Quincy Adams when one of the other candidates, Henry Clay, agreed to throw his support in Congress behind Adams in return for an appointment to Secretary of State. This deal in Congress for the Presidency between Adams and Clay in 1824 would be labelled by Jackson and his supporters as the “Corrupt Bargain” and, after resigning his seat in C...