To stave off the ennui between post-collegiate baseball (and softball !!!) season and the beginning of the fall football season, to indulge my insatiable curiosity about American history, and to celebrate the 249th anniversary of the founding of the United States, I'm going to launch ITF the "Anonymous Vice Presidents Project." From time to time as it suits me this summer, I'm going to post brief profiles and interesting facts, to me at least, about our unknown VEEPs -- my curated list those men who were one heartbeat away from the presidency, but faded into historical obscurity -- at least until now. DISCLAIMER: I admit right up front that to save time this effort may be AI-aided. It will also be guided by Texas Vice President (for FDR) John Nance Garner's purported admonition that "the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss."
** Previously profiled here: https://texas.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-the-most-important-texan-you-may-never-have-heard-of-—-john-nance-“cactus-jack”-garner.629677/ )
So here goes. I hope UT History legend Prof. H.W. Brands is reading. (I'm presuming, perhaps too optimistically, that most OBs will have heard of the 15 or so vice presidents who did become president, the infamous Aaron Burr and John C. Calhoun, and the post-!950 VPs beginning with Richard Nixon, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Kamala Harris, and J.D. Vance -- and want in any event to avoid those political land mines.) My list in bold of the Anonymous Vice Presidents through the mid-20th Century:- John Adams (1789–1797)
- Thomas Jefferson (1797–1801)
- Aaron Burr (1801–1805)
- George Clinton (1805–1812)
- Elbridge Gerry (1813–1814)
- Daniel D. Tompkins (1817–1825)
- John C. Calhoun (1825–1832)
- Martin Van Buren (1833–1837)
- Richard Mentor Johnson (1837–1841)
- John Tyler (1841)
- George M. Dallas (1845–1849)
- Millard Fillmore (1849–1850)
- William R. King (1853)
- John C. Breckinridge (1857–1861)
- Hannibal Hamlin (1861–1865)
- Andrew Johnson (1865)
- Schuyler Colfax (1869–1873)
- Henry Wilson (1873–1875)
- William A. Wheeler (1877–1881)
- Chester A. Arthur (1881) *
- Thomas A. Hendricks (1885)
- Levi P. Morton (1889–1893)
- Adlai E. Stevenson I (1893–1897)
- Garret A. Hobart (1897–1899)
- Theodore Roosevelt (1901)
- Charles W. Fairbanks (1905–1909)
- James S. Sherman (1909–1912)
- Thomas R. Marshall (1913–1921)
- Calvin Coolidge (1921–1923)
- Charles G. Dawes (1925–1929)
- Charles Curtis (1929–1933)
- John Nance Garner (1933–1941) **
- Henry A. Wallace (1941–1945)
- Harry S. Truman (1945)
- Alben W. Barkley (1949–1953)
** Previously profiled here: https://texas.forums.rivals.com/threads/ot-the-most-important-texan-you-may-never-have-heard-of-—-john-nance-“cactus-jack”-garner.629677/ )
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