We continue our quest to find a conspiracy theory for each President of the United States. To reiterate the rules, we need something that was not just made up yesterday on the Interwebs: a conspiracy theory is best if it is contemporary with the president, or arose shortly thereafter. And to be a REAL conspiracy theory, it should be bogus otherwise, or at least dismissed by mere Mainstream Historians (the ones who know what they’re doing.)
I’m sorry, but I cannot keep all the conspiracy theories about ANDREW JOHNSON straight. Talk about politicians who couldn’t get a break! A Southern Democrat who hated the idea of Secession, he got out of Tennessee as the war began just ahead of several bullets fired his way, and found himself trusted by neither side in Washington. This apparently made him an ideal symbol for reuniting the country when Abraham Lincoln ran for a second term. When he found himself in Lincoln’s position, investigations started within days, resulting in several attempts, one of which was successful, to call for his impeachment. When that failed to remove him from office, his enemies dismissed him from history by claiming he was drunk through his entire administration. The most thoroughly disbelieved conspiracy theory, though, is that assassinating Abraham Lincoln was his idea in the first place, which relies heavily on the fact that John Wilkes Booth left a calling card at his place the day the cospiracy went into action.
Ulysses S. Grant was another president who couldn’t get a break. Surrounded by predators and consigned by history to his childhood nickname “Useless”, he seems to have been more conspired against than conspiring. He ALSO is accused of being thoroughly intoxicated through HIS term. However, the conspiracy theorists have not left him out of the big story of the era, linking him in some way to Secretary of War Stanton’s conspiracy to kill the President (mentioned last time.) It does so happen that on the night of the assassination, the Lincolns were going to attend the theater with the Grants, and the fact that Ulysses bowed out of the date is a Sure Sign he knew what was going to happen. (The truth of the matter is that Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Lincoln had some bad blood between them and Julia Grant insisted they not attend the play. Dibs on the story about a universe in which they did actually go, and John Wilkes Booth, indecisive about whether to shoot Lincoln or Grant, was stopped in time.)
The election of 1876 featured two governors known for their honesty and their interest in reform. Samuel J. Tilden had put Boss Tweed jail, striking a blow against the political machine in New York, while, in Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes worked, against a hostile legislature at first, to institute a meritocracy (government by people who had experience and skill instead of connections) and guaranteeing the right to vote of Ohio African-Americans. The trouble for BOTH sides was that although Tilden was reasonably famous, nobody much outside of Ohio had ever paid much attention to Hayes. In the end, the best the Democrats could do was push the idea that hayes was SO nice, SO honest, and SO polite that he had to be a front for evil conspirators planning to crush the opposition and continue to tax the South out of any power. (The story about how Hayes lost the election, but conspirators connived to “find” electoral votes that could go the other way is unfortunately true, so it does not qualify for our list.)
Blogsy Babbles 