A few good men

For one of my classes at high school, I was searching the history channel’s website on This Day in History, this day being Oct. 4. One of the events immediately distinguished itself from the others because it was seemingly insignificant. On October 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln watched a balloon “ascend” into the sky.
Surprisingly, this makes me really wonder, “How do historians differentiate between significant and insignificant? Why are some presidents nationally recognized while others are unheard of?”
My friends, I’d like to take the next few minutes to recount two worthy stories of presidents you may not have even heard of.
The majority of society can recall Abraham Lincoln’s mode of death, his assassin, the play he was watching, and even the nerdiest members of society can recall the phrase John Wilkes Booth uttered as he shot the back of Lincoln’s head. Some people can even tell you the ensuing period was called “Reconstruction.” However, one thing nobody remembers is Andrew Johnson, the president directly after Lincoln who came to one of Lincoln’s inaugurations drunk (he was Lincoln’s vice president). Andrew Johnson is hands-down the funniest president we’ve ever had and ever will have, and here’s why. Despite being a Republican himself, he was constantly bickering with the Radical Republicans in Congress. Everything they sent towards him, he vetoed, vetoed, and vetoed some more. After ticking as many people in his party off as much as possible, the House of Representatives attempted to impeach Johnson; however, their reasons for impeachment was merely a 19th Century version of “10 Things I Hate About You.” In order to keep Johnson from fiddling with members of his cabinet, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, bypassing Johnson’s veto, of course. Less than a year later, Johnson deliberately fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was impeached.
To quote the famous historian Arthur Schlesinger, “Millard Fillmore is the most awesome thing to hit Earth since Whitesnake and Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
His story dates all the way back to his grandfather, who was stranded during the French and Indian War. In order to survive, his grandfather ate everything in sight, eventually leading to the consumption of his own jacket. Millard Fillmore himself seems like the type of person onto which mediocrity was thrust. Like Johnson, Fillmore’s entry into the Oval Office was also a mistake — he was vice president to Zachary Taylor, who died of gastroenteritis, and so Millard Fillmore rode into the White House on a wave of diarrhea. He came from very modest backgrounds in the middle of nowhere New York. Apprenticed to a fuller, he quit when he couldn’t stand to see his “master” mistreat a turkey. He was later apprenticed to a judge after discovering his love for law, but the judge discontinued their connection when Fillmore let a few clients slip by without fully paying certain taxes. While having his own partnership outside Buffalo, New York, he was picked up by a political machine — the Anti-Masonic Party. He followed his mentor into the Whig Party, on which he eventually got onto Zachary Taylor’s ballot. Although Fillmore didn’t do anything to unite the country, his rise to power is certainly a good story.