Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (103 page)

On September 26, 1831, the Antimasonic Party, one of the first serious “third parties,” chose William Wirt as its candidate in America’s first nominating convention. Wirt finished fourth in the race, with two electoral votes.

On Harrison’s death, of pneumonia on April 4 after one month in office, Tyler became the first vice president to succeed to the office owing to the death of a sitting president, on April 6, 1841. Tyler retained Harrison’s cabinet, and named no new vice president. There was no constitutional provision for replacing a vice president until ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967.

The candidates of the Liberal Republicans and the Northern Democrats in 1872 were Greeley and B. Gratz Brown. Greeley died on November 29, 1872, before his 66 electors voted. In the electoral balloting for president, 63 of Greeley’s votes were scattered among four other men, including Brown.

Tilden won a small majority in the popular vote and led in the Electoral College, but was one short of the required number of electoral votes. Twenty-two electoral votes were in dispute because Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon each sent in two sets of election returns. To win, Tilden needed just one of these; Hayes needed all twenty-two. The chairman of the Republican Party claimed Hayes had won all twenty-two votes, and the dispute lasted until March 1877. The vote was accompanied by widespread fraud, especially in the South. Congress was left to decide the issue, and an electoral commission was established to settle the question. Splitting on straight partisan lines, the commission gave the election to Hayes, who had promised the South that he would bring an end to Reconstruction and withdraw federal troops from their states.

In the election of 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote with 48.6 percent of the votes cast, but lost the election in the Electoral College, where Harrison won 233–168.

Nixon’s running mate, Agnew, the former governor of Maryland, was accused of tax fraud and having taken bribes while a county executive. He later pleaded no contest to the tax evasion charge and resigned as vice president. Under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, enacted in 1967 to ensure orderly succession in the event of a president’s death or resignation, Nixon appointed Representative Gerald Ford as vice president, and Congress confirmed him.

Ford succeeded Nixon following his resignation on August 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Ford, under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, appointed Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York as vice president.

Selected Readings

T
he following selection of readings and references begins with general books and histories that cover broad themes and large sections of American history. This guide to general readings is then followed by a listing of books keyed by chapter to the present work.

The great breadth and number of sources used in documenting this history would have made standard footnoting cumbersome. For the sake of readability, I have chosen to attribute any direct citations in the text; all other sources used are included in the following annotated listings.

I have attempted to use only those sources that are either standard works still in print or generally available through public libraries, and recently published works that include the most up-to-date scholarship.

Andrew, Christopher.
For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush.
New York: Harper-Collins, 1995. Exhaustive history of America’s spies and their influence on American presidents.

Bamford, James.
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.
New York: Doubleday, 2001. An in-depth history of the National Security Agency, the world’s most powerful, farthest-reaching espionage organization, with new material describing the lapses that preceded the 9/11 attacks.

Bennett, Lerone, Jr.
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America
(5th ed.). Chicago: Johnson, 1982. A standard work that assesses the impact of blacks in America and the course of black American history.

Beschloss, Michael.
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. Good overview of how several presidents—from Jackson and Lincoln to Kennedy and Reagan—dealt with crisis through their personal courage.

Bettmann, Otto L.
The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible!
New York: Random House, 1974. An amusing corrective to the widely accepted notion that things used to be much better, on a variety of subjects including education, pollution, and work.

Boller, Paul F., Jr.
Presidential Campaigns.
London: Oxford University Press, 1984. A refreshingly humorous look at the history of America’s curious process of selecting presidents. Anecdotal and entertaining, as well as fascinating history.

———.
Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Like his earlier books in a series about the presidents, this offers a unique snapshot view of presidential spouses, with fascinating and revealing stories of their role.

Brandon, William.
The American Heritage Book of Indians.
New York: American Heritage, 1963. A lavishly illustrated history with much fascinating detail about Indian life and history.

Buckley, Gail.
American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm.
New York: Random House, 2001. The largely untold story of the role of blacks in America’s military history.

Burns, James McGregor.
The American Experiment: The Vineyard of Liberty.
New York: Knopf, 1982.

———.
The American Experiment: The Workshop of Democracy.
New York: Knopf, 1985.

———.
The American Experiment: The Crosswinds of Freedom.
New York: Knopf, 1989. A political scientist and mainly a middle-of-the-roader in terms of interpretation, Burns is always lucid and entertaining. These three volumes cover the period from the making of the Constitution through the Reagan years.