Free Republic

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — “Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson.” That is not exactly what we expect to hear about the president who spoke of “malice toward none,” referring to the president who wrote that “all men are created equal.” Presidents have never been immune from criticism by other presidents. But Jefferson and Lincoln? These two stare down at us from Mount Rushmore as heroic, stainless and serene, and any suggestion of disharmony seems somehow a criticism of America itself. Still, Lincoln seems not to have gotten that message. “Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man,” wrote William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s law...

The growing movement to find new appellations for buildings, landmarks and even bodies of water named after Confederate leaders has finally expanded to reach Woodrow Wilson, America’s 28th president, a model progressive Democrat and a world-class racist scumbag.

The first kids of US presidents are in the public eye almost as much as their parents. They dictate fashion trends, appear on their parents' behalf at embassies around the world, and sometimes host senior prom in the White House East Room. You know, normal kid stuff. But when the first family departs 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the spotlight typically turns away from them. To celebrate the Fourth of July — which also happens to be Malia Obama's birthday — we decided to find out what the first children are up to these days. The first kids of US presidents are...

As national debate rages about the Confederate flag, a peculiar installation of that controversial banner may be hiding in plain sight – inside the cushion of Abraham Lincoln’s rocking chair, a replica that rests in a balcony box in the re-built Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The theatre—a functioning play space and a museum—reopened in 1968, 103 years after President Lincoln died by gunfire in April of 1865 at the end of the Civil War while he watched a play there. The builder of the replica chair—a now-deceased craftsman named Carlton McLendon—lived in Montgomery, Ala. and felt bitter toward the...

he Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which has stood near the banks of the Potomac River in Washington for more than 70 years, is a classical tribute to the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president.. This week, the Jefferson Memorial was drawn into the national debate about race following the shooting deaths of nine people in a predominantly black church in South Carolina last week. It joins other public statues depicting Southern or Confederate figures, including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, that some are arguing represent the country's racist past and should be removed. CNN anchor...

He was a slave owner, hostile to the forces of abolitionism that were rising in America. He imposed a cruel policy of Indian removal, forcing the tribes of the Southeast across a brutal march to the Oklahoma territory. He was a hot-headed general, quick to violence and known to overstep his legal bounds, as when he summarily executed two Britons for aiding the Indian enemy during the First Seminole War. On some levels, it’s easy to understand the campaign to remove Andrew Jackson’s mug from the $20 bill. Pundits are rushing to endorse the idea. The leading candidate to replace...

THE AVARICE of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a wonder to behold. They crave wealth, it seems, even more than they crave power, and display no qualms about exploiting their political stature to amass it. According to a required financial disclosure filing last week, the former president and his wife have collected more than $30 million since January 2014, most of it from speaking engagements for which they charged an average of $240,000 each. To put that figure in perspective, what the Clintons earn per speech is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year. Since leaving...

There are only five living US presidents, but many of the Republican 2016 hopefuls seem to have trouble ranking them. Last weekend during the Freedom Summit in Greeneville, South Carolina, CNN's Chris Moody asked many of the likely GOP candidates to name the greatest living president. The question left many of them stumped. CNN on Wednesday released a video of the awkward encounters. Several of the people questioned by Moody cited Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004. One candidate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, acknowledged he didn't know how to answer the question. "I don't know. I'd have to think about...

The alarm system at the Texas home of the former President George H.W. Bush was broken for at least 13 months before the Secret Service fixed it, according to a federal report released on Thursday. The disclosure is in a report by Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth who said that Secret Service personnel protecting the first President Bush noticed a failure in the alarm system at Bush's Houston home in September 2013. The alarm had outlived its recommended period of operation, the report found. The Roth report also found security equipment problems at the homes of other former presidents....

No presidential decision is as politically hazardous as the war decision. That’s because voters are quicker and more ferocious in turning on their chief executives when wars go awry than when events become troublesome in other areas of governance. Woe be to the president who finds himself in a war he can’t win and can’t get out of, or finds that the price of war far outweighs the promised benefits, or learns that the rationale for war doesn’t hold up. Herewith, then, a catalogue of the country’s five worst wartime presidents, men who took their country to war, or continued...

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On this date in 1865, Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The 16th president died the next morning.

Last week, as radical Islamists slaughtered 148 Christian students at a Kenyan university, America’s faithful celebrated Easter and Passover in tranquility, demonstrating why religious liberty is not the eccentric uncle in the human-rights family — it’s the matriarch. Yet with demonic evil spanning the globe, and religion a life-and-death matter, punishment for defending one’s faith is now acceptable in America. Our “live and let live” ethic is increasingly imperiled. Witness the firestorm after Indiana became the 20th state to enact its version of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In our morally upside-down world, we accommodate the nuclear ambitions of...

Secrets of the White House butlers revealed in new book: Staff saw Bill Clinton and Lewinsky cavorting for years, heard Hillary 'throw a lamp' at him - and even walked in on John F Kennedy swimming naked with his secretaries They have a unique - and fascinating - insight into the private lives of America's First Families. Now, former White House butlers and other staff members have revealed their secrets about daily life inside the six-floor mansion, which features a whopping 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms and 28 fireplaces. The dedicated professionals, also including maids, cooks, florists, doormen and engineers, have...

Thomas Jefferson, Patron Saint of American Liberals, would not recognize his spiritual offspring in today’s liberal President Obama and his handling of the Middle East. Jefferson, as a trade commissioner and then ambassador in Paris for six years (1784-90), faced almost daily the tragedy of American hostages enslaved by violent Muslims and his own frustrating inability to liberate them. However, what he learned served him well as the leading hawk for war a decade later when he became president and went to war against belligerent Islam.

In 1998, the Washington National Airport in Arlington, VA was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – and local Democrats are still bitter about it. The Washington Post recently conducted a survey of Washington, DC area residents, asking them what they prefer to call the busy airport. The results show that while younger people tend to call it by its current title, Reagan National, older, liberal commuters refuse to utter the name of the conservative president. In total, 72 percent of Republicans surveyed said they refer to it as 'Reagan' or 'Reagan National,' while only 35 percent of Democrats acknowledged the airport by that name. Survey participant Jason West's eloquent explanation...

As state legislatures throughout America struggle with requirements to balance their state budgets, let us pause to remember that one-quarter of the budget is dictated by Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose damage to state budgets lives on 42 years after his death. As president, LBJ pushed for Medicaid -- free health insurance for poor people. This was a boon to the medical industry, particularly hospitals, doctors, sellers of wheelchairs, and nursing homes. But Medicaid comes at the expense of schools, highways, prisons and others state services because it requires states to pony up some of the money in this federally mandated...

“With malice toward none; with charity for all…” It was a civic gesture as unexpected then as it is needed now. One hundred and fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln stood on the eastern portico of the U.S. Capitol and delivered a few words—703, to be precise—at his Second Inaugural. The speech remains the most celebrated inaugural address in our history. Fredrick Douglass, not always an admirer of Lincoln, called it a “sacred effort.” Lincoln himself acknowledged it was filled with “lots of wisdom” and predicted it would “wear as well as—perhaps even better than—any thing I have produced.” From...

President Roosevelt to Congress