The office made the presidents larger than life, so it is often surprising to
discover the details of their humanity. To help get inside their lives, the
National Park Service, in partnership with the White
House Historical Association and the National
Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, has produced "American
Presidents," an online travel itinerary comprised of places associated
with the 43 men who have occupied the office. The latest in a series offered by
the National Park Service to showcase properties in the National Register of Historic
Places, the itinerary is an expansive resource not only for the traveler,
but for anyone interested in knowing more about the presidents and their lives. American Presidents is the 47th in the ongoing National Park
Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Series. To see this and
other itineraries, go to www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/.
For more information, contact Carol Shull, Chief, Heritage Education Services,
National Park Service, carol_shull@nps.gov.
The itinerary leads off with essays by presidential historians Michael
Beschloss and Richard Norton Smith. These ruminations on the office, the
individuals, and the power of place set the tone. Smith discusses the
phenomenon in which presidents, because of their omnipresence in the media,
become like “virtual family members.” Visitors to presidential homes and sites,
he says, can get behind the official persona to discover the real human being
who found himself in this position of unequalled power and exposure.
“Sometimes it’s the personal detail, not the great deed, that makes the
connection,” writes Smith. “The fact that Gerald R. Ford, born Leslie L. King,
Jr., did not meet his birth father until he was 17 years of age may strike a
more responsive chord among his grandchildren’s generation than his role in the
Helsinki Accords or the SALT II treaty.” When clothing merchant Harry Truman’s
small business failed in 1922, he moved into his mother-in-law’s house in
Smith’s essay offers insight into a host of presidents via their personal
residences and places associated with their lives as ordinary citizens. How did
10-year-old Herbert Hoover’s hours in a silent Quaker
meetinghouse shape the president who would grapple with the Great
Depression? As John Adams reeled with the loss of the 1800 election and grieved
the death of his alcoholic son, did it occur to him that the name of the family
farm where he had retired–Peacefield–was
cruelly ironic?
Michael Beschloss offers a look at the presidency over time, how it either
shaped–or was shaped by–historical events. From the heady era of George
Washington, the self-effacing yet charismatic “old hero,” to the weary days of
the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration, beset by social upheaval and the
Vietnam War, he documents the presidency’s changing character.
"American Presidents" makes this very rich history available in 73
places associated with the country’s leaders. Nearly half of the sites are part
of the National Park System. The list runs chronologically, beginning with
George Washington, with at least one property associated with each president
and in many cases, more.
Three sites, for example, are under Thomas Jefferson: Monticello,
the Jefferson Memorial in
When Millard Fillmore was trying to keep the Union from disintegrating over
slavery in the early 1850s, he may have longed for the simple
one-and-a-half-story clapboard house in
Zachary Taylor’s home in frontier
Benjamin Harrison campaigned from the grand porch of his 16- room Italianate
house in
The restoration of the Kennedy family’s nine-room Colonial Revival house in
Beschloss writes, “Presidential reputations are constantly fluctuating . . . as
we see them in more distant hindsight, the phenomenon that historian Barbara
Tuchman so vividly called ‘the lantern on the stern.’” What Beschloss calls the
“strong presidency” of the 20th century grew out of FDR’s leadership in World
War II and continued as his successors faced the Cold War, the stand off over
the Berlin Wall, and the showdown during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cold War
threatened to become hot as the nuclear age raised the stakes beyond
comprehension. “Many Americans,” Beschloss writes, “felt that literally one
human being was shielding them against a worldwide threat.”
With the
Given the unenviable task of following the martyred Abraham Lincoln into
office, Johnson inherited the difficult post-Civil War reconstruction. He was
nearly impeached, finally retreating to his homestead in
The itinerary captures the complexity of the times associated with each
president’s era, whether a time of monumental upheaval or uneventful
prosperity. In 1819, during the James Monroe presidency, the nation was hit by
a depression, even as slavery was already threatening to tear it apart.
When Calvin Coolidge took office in 1923, he restored confidence after the
Harding scandals, and according to the itinerary’s text, “symbolized stability
during a time of rapid, disorienting social change.” While Jimmy Carter was
praised for his success in brokering compromise between
William Henry Harrison lived at the edge of a frontier nation and his character
seemed well suited. But the fine plantation-style house he built while governor
of the
Historical events and circumstances inevitably become personal, and personal
history influences how presidents deal with the challenges. This is evident in
sites that show how the chief executives saw themselves, and how they wanted
others to see them.
In a “Learn More” section, the itinerary links to a large selection of related
websites, such as those of state tourism offices, associated parks and historic
sites, private museums, and presidential libraries. “American Presidents” also
links to related itineraries, such as “Journey Through Hallowed
Ground,” in part a look at the presidents whose lives are intertwined with
a corridor that runs from southern
Though some of the sites in "American Presidents" are in the National
Park System, others are preserved by state and local authorities, friends
groups, foundations, and individuals. Many places served variably as a refuge
from the pressure of the presidency, an extension of the Oval Office, or a home
where one reacclimated to the life of a normal citizen. But each presents a
glimpse of an individual and his family, and the times in which they lived. In
this respect, the itinerary is a remarkable educational tool.
Richard Norton Smith’s essay is titled, appropriately, “Being There: Encountering
America’s Presidents.” “You don’t have to live in the past to learn from it,”
he writes, “unless you count the hours spent at these [sites], where we become
immersed in a country that has never become but, like Jefferson’s
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