VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – Historian Larry Cook returned to his hometown this past weekend to present about happenings in the lives of four former presidents.
A published author, lifelong collector of memorabilia, and authority on both little-known facts and the personal side of the presidency, Cook first spoke to those gathered in the Fayetteville Free Library on May 21 about Andrew Jackson, the head of state nicknamed “Old Hickory” due to his “rugged, rough and tough” reputation.
Cook said Jackson lent support to the Revolutionary War effort by joining the Continental Army at the age of 13. His capture only two weeks later, however, left him with scars, a vendetta and a legacy as the only president to have been a prisoner of war.
Jackson’s life before his first inauguration was marked by other misfortunes, as Cook explained, namely the deaths of his mother and brother from smallpox and an 1806 duel that lodged a bullet in his chest for the rest of his days.
Furthermore, in the lead-up to his presidency, he engaged in a mudslinging back-and-forth with his opponent in the run for office, the incumbent John Quincy Adams. Jackson had accused Adams of stealing the prior election, while Adams accused Jackson of war crimes and labeled his wife, Rachel, an adulteress because she was not legally divorced from her first husband at the time of their marriage.
The resulting distress from the newspaper coverage was seen as a contributing factor to Rachel’s death in the weeks before Jackson left Tennessee for Washington.
Later on, luck would be in Jackson’s corner, comparatively at least, when an assassination attempt—noted as the first ever on a sitting president—proved unsuccessful.
The gunman tried to shoot Jackson near the United States Capitol rotunda once at a distance and once at point-blank range, but the powder did not ignite properly either time and no projectiles were fired. In response, frontiersman and then-congressman Davy Crockett joined Jackson in taking down the would-be assassin, Cook said.
The visiting historian then moved the discussion to the Roosevelts as he wove together stories of Theodore, or Teddy as he was often called, and Franklin Delano, the man regularly referred to simply as FDR.
Cook made clear that the two presidents were fifth cousins and that Franklin was the fifth cousin once removed to his wife, Eleanor, an orphan by age 10 who was considered Teddy’s favorite niece.
Though Teddy was seen as more faithful to his spouse and less of a smoker and drinker than Franklin, the two had more in common than blood relation according to Cook.
In addition to assuming the spot of assistant secretary of the Navy at separate times, the two both served as New York’s governor and dealt with physical disabilities. Specifically, Theodore lost sight in his left eye after sparring in a boxing match with a Navy officer, while Franklin was paralyzed with polio.
Cook also mentioned that the pair of presidential relatives had narrowly survived assassination attempts of their own; in Theodore’s case, the bullet went through a folded speech and eyeglass container in his breast pocket before hitting the upper part of his ribcage.
Prior to a question and answer segment, Cook turned his talk to the subject of the United States’ 16th president and the first to die by assassination, Abraham Lincoln. During that portion of the afternoon presentation, the Manlius native stuck mostly to facts and mysteries about a few men in Lincoln’s inner circle.
One was his assistant secretary of war and vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Thomas Scott, regarded by Cook as someone “history needs to know more about.” Another was John Hall, purportedly a secretary of Lincoln’s whose descendant provided Cook with such belongings as a Civil War orders book.
