Senators, Representatives, Governors, and
Others Who Have Made Their Way
to the White House.
The road to the Presidency is as uncertain as the course of a Western
river. Men have marched to the White House by so many different routes
that it seems as if any path might lead to that center of our political
labyrinth. On the other hand, any path may unexpectedly present an
obstacle to the ambitious traveler.
Senator La Follette hesitated to leave the Governorship of Wisconsin for
the Senate, and at the time political experts said pointedly that the
Senate was not the road to the Presidency. The ghost of that old
superstition is laid by the Louisville _Herald_:
This statement does not bear investigation. Virginia sent
two men who had served as Senators, James Monroe and John
Tyler, later on to the White House. Martin Van Buren served
as a Senator from New York before he became President. James
Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, served in the Senate from 1834
till 1845, when he became Secretary of State under President
Polk. John Quincy Adams was elected to the Senate in 1803.
Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, was sent to the Senate twice,
first in 1797 and second in 1823. He did not become
President till 1829. Andrew Johnson, of the same State, was
elected to the Senate in 1857, and became President in 1865.
Franklin Pierce was a Senator from New Hampshire in 1837.
Benjamin Harrison went direct almost from the Senate to the
White House, the term which he served in the Senate expiring
in 1887, the year before his election to the Presidency.
Abraham Lincoln was a defeated candidate for the Senate, and
his leading opponent for the Presidency, Douglas, a
full-fledged Senator at the time of the election of Lincoln
for President. Breckinridge, another of Lincoln's opponents,
was Vice-President from 1857 till 1861.
Successful soldiers find, it is often said, an easy road to
the White House; but not all the soldiers who have been
candidates for the Presidency have succeeded. Scott and
Fremont both failed of election. So did McClellan and
Hancock.
Scott was beaten by another soldier, Franklin Pierce, but
Fremont was in turn defeated by a civilian, Buchanan.
McClellan was defeated by Lincoln, a lawyer, and Hancock by
another soldier, Garfield.
McKinley had served a long time in the House of
Representatives before becoming a candidate for the
Presidency. His opponent, Bryan, had also served for a time
in the House of Representatives. James G. Blaine, who so
often aspired to the Presidency, had, like Henry Clay, also
a frequent Presidential aspirant, served with distinction as
Speaker of the House.
President Roosevelt broke, in 1904, the tradition that no
Vice-President succeeding to the Presidency by the death of
the actual incumbent could be elected President.