August 26 is National Dog Day, a holiday to celebrate dogs and all that they do for us, and to welcome those in need into our lives through animal rescue.

It is also a day to acknowledge presidential dogs, those pets that humanize the leaders of the United States. (As President Harry S. Truman famously said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”)
Fido, born around 1855, was Abraham Lincoln’s dog. Residents of Springfield remembered seeing Lincoln walk to the local market with Fido trailing behind carrying a parcel in his mouth.

Picture of Fido from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
When Lincoln was elected president, he decided not to take Fido to Washington, because he was worried the dog would not survive the long train ride. Instead, he gave Fido to two neighbor boys, John and Frank Roll, who promised to take good care of him. Lincoln even gave the Roll family the Lincolns’ horsehair sofa, so that Fido would feel more at home. Shortly before leaving Springfield, the Lincolns took Fido to a photography studio to take his picture.
After Lincoln was assassinated, the Rolls brought Fido to Lincoln’s home to greet the mourners. Fido died less than a year later.
But Lincoln was not without pets in the White House. Secretary of State William Seward gave him two kittens, which he named Tabby and Dixie.
Laddie Boy was the first “celebrity” White House pet. Laddie Boy, President Warren G. Harding’s Airedale terrier, was the first to receive regular coverage from newspaper reporters.
Laddie Boy came to the White House when he was seven months old, on March 5, 1921, the day after Harding took office. Laddie Boy not only went to most cabinet meetings, but he had his very own hand-carved chair on which to sit. Harding loved dogs and he used Laddie Boy to demonstrate his connection to the average person.

Laddie Boy had an official portrait. (Library of Congress)
Laddie Boy’s popularity with reporters was so great they often quoted him in pretend interviews. Smithsonian Magazine reports that Laddie Boy was so beloved nationwide that the Newsboys’ Association asked every newspaper delivery boy in the country to donate one penny to a special fund to build a statue of Laddie Boy. In all, nineteen thousand one hundred thirty-four pennies were collected and melted down. Laddie Boy’s likeness, made from the copper in the pennies, still stands in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Most amusingly, Laddie Boy had a troublesome brother, just like many presidents have had. The New York Times of July 30, 1921 reported that “Dickie Boy” appeared in a Denver court for killing chickens.
Fala, a Scottish Terrier, was Franklin Roosevelt’s dog, and one of the most famous presidential pets. Given to the Roosevelts by a cousin, the dog and his White House antics were mentioned frequently by the media and often referenced by Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. According to the National Archives:

1940 Photograph of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his dog Fala at a picnic on “Sunset Hill” near Pine Plains, NY. Fala is four months old.
Secret Service agents called Fala ‘The Informer’ because, during secret wartime presidential trips, the dog was instantly recognized while out on his walks. But this celebrity was put to good use in 1941 when Fala was named national president of Barkers for Britain.”
Barkers for Britain was created as a way for dog lovers to support the nationwide Bundles for Britain program, which collected cash contributions and donations of clothing, blankets, and other basic necessities for the British people fighting in WWII.
Fala survived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried near him. A statue of Fala beside Roosevelt is featured in Washington, D.C.’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the only presidential pet so honored.
Dwight Eisenhower’s dog, Heidi, was evicted from the White House by Mamie Eisenhower after having an accident on an expensive rug in the diplomatic reception room. The damage could not be fully removed. Mamie banished Heidi to the Eisenhower farm in Gettysburg.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower walks by Heidi, his Weimaraner, as he returns to the White House after a press conference on March 11, 1959, at the Executive Office Building. Photo courtesy Dwight D. Eisenhower Library Center.
Millie, the dog belonging to Barbara and George H. Bush, wrote her own best-selling book, giving a dog’s-eye perspective on what goes on in the White House.

Barbara Bush with Millie
Some Happy Dog/President Combinations



George W. Bush’s dogs, Barney (bottom) and Spot (top) step off Marine One on the south lawn of the White House. (Reuters/Larry Downing)

The Obamas’ dog, holding a press conference
Not all presidents have had dogs; some had other pets. John Quincy Adams kept an alligator in his bathtub, for example. It was a gift from Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette. Sources report that Adams enjoyed showing the scary-looking animal off to disbelieving White House visitors for several months before it moved to a different home. Apparently Herbert Hoover also hosted alligators for a while; his son Allan had a pair, and they sometimes crawled around the White House grounds. He was, however, more partial to his dog King Tut.

President Herbert Hoover poses with his dog, King Tut, a Belgian shepherd. Circa 1928 photo courtesy Herbert E. French, Library of Congress.
William Henry Harrison had a goat and a cow. A number of presidents had cats, including William McKinley and Woodrow Wilson. But the majority did have dogs.
You can learn more about White House pets at the Presidential Pet Museum, here.
Happy National Dog Day!!
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Posted on August 21, 2020 by rhapsodyinbooks
The first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place in Ottawa, Illinois on this date in history, August 21, 1858. Lincoln addressed the subject of slavery, and averred that:
. . . . if we could arrest the spread, and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years—if it should live so long — in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races.”
But Douglas, he charges, wanted to make slavery national. Lincoln said:
This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory to exclude slavery, and he does so not because he says it is right in itself—he does not give any opinion on that—but because it has been decided by the court, and, being decided by the court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law — not that he judges at all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ He places it on that ground alone, and you will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision, commits himself on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ The next decision, as much as this, will be a ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe.”

Lincoln and Douglas
He could not “shake Judge Douglas’s tooth loose” from the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln said. “I can not divert him from it. He hangs to the last to the Dred Scott decision.”
And what are the consequences of this strict adherence to the finding of the Supreme Court, no matter what morality demands? Lincoln:
When he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he ‘cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up’ — that it is a sacred right of self-government — he is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people.”
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Posted on July 17, 2020 by rhapsodyinbooks
During the Civil War, the U.S. Congress passed two “Confiscation Acts” relating to the fate of slaves that made their way to Union lines.
The Confiscation Act of 1861, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on August 6, 1861, authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces (“property” included slaves).
The Confiscation Act of 1862, passed on July 17, 1862, this day in history, stated that any Confederate official, military or civilian, who did not surrender within 60 days of the act’s passage would have their slaves freed in criminal proceedings. However, this act was only applicable to Confederate areas that had already been occupied by the Union Army.

Lincoln in 1862
Though U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was concerned about the practical legality of these acts, and believed that they might push the border states towards siding with the Confederacy, he nonetheless signed them to make them law. The growing movement towards emancipation was aided by these acts, which eventually led to the Preliminary Emancipation Act of September, 1862, and the Final Emancipation Proclamation of January, 1863.
Filed under: legal | Tagged: Civil War, History, Lincoln, Slavery | Leave a comment »