[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Wallace here are some others to add to the list. Geo. Washington, surveyor and plantation owner. T Jefferson, plantation owner, farmer, and nail manufacturing business. I think Jackson was too. (No, some Employees...not all slaves. Like lots of businesses dealt with lots of debt and were presumably taxed.) U. Grant, Store owner in Galena IL. Warren Harding owned newspapers in Ohio. If you look at earlier Presidents you will probably find that they had a lot of small farms and practiced law.

[Wallace T.]

I believe the Civil War was the dividing line between the period of part-time politicians who had business or farming interests and full-time politicians with limited private sector experience other than the practice of law. Out of our first seven Presidents, five had extensive farming interests; the other two (John Adams and John Quincy Adams) were attorneys.