Like most of my generation, I can remember exactly where I was when, as a high school junior, I heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. And I vividly recall the somber weekend that followed, most of which was spent glued to our black-and-white (by then 11-years old and showing its age) TV, watching every moment of the ritual of a Catholic presidential funeral. Ever since, I have been fascinated not only by the U.S. Presidency but by the secular and religious rituals of presidential funerals. Now two presidential historians, Lindsay M. Chervinsky (author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution) and Matthew R. Costello (author of The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President) have facilitated a unique look at American society and history through the special lens of presidential funerals. Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, eds. Lindsay M. Chervinsky and Matthew R. Costello (U. of Virginia Pr, 2023) bring together chapters by diverse presidential scholars to illuminate how different generations of American communities have mourned our presidents and former presidents.
In a volume of this sort, obviously not all presidents’ deaths can be considered. The editors settled on a mix of 19th and 20th-century presidents, some better known, some lesser studied – Washington (1799), Jefferson (1826), Jackson (1845), Zachary Taylor (1850), Lincoln (1865), Andrew Johnson (1875), Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Hoover (1964), FDR (1945), JFK (1963), Reagan (2004), and George H.W. Bush (2018). Some selections, I suppose, were obvious and inevitable. Personally, I would have wished the editors had included William Henry Harrison (1841), the first president to die in office, for just that reason, so as to consider how Americans reacted to that as yet unprecedented occurrence.
George Washington (December 14, 1799) did not die in office but otherwise was the first in every regard. He died unexpectedly, ill for just two days. At that time, of course, the news travelled slowly. So he was already buried before the news reached more distant parts of the country. While Washington would have preferred a more private interment, he got a grand (albeit completely local) military funeral at Mount Vernon, officiated by a local Episcopal Minister using the Book of Common Prayer. What the chapter explores in particular was the national mourning – at least 419 mock funerals in 16 states and some 300 eulogies and funeral orations. Catholic bishop John Carroll eulogized him in Baltimore on Washington’s Birthday in 1800. These widespread commemorations solidified Washington’s place as national patriarch, a position he still holds.
Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, famously died at his Monticello home on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. His predecessor, John Adams, died later that day. Daniel Webster eulogized both of them for having died during « the great day of national jubilee. » The author, himself a descendent of one of Jefferson’s slaves, mentions all that but focuses largely on the effects of Jefferson’s death on his slaves, some of whom were forcibly transported to the Deep South after the « Dispersal Sales » of 1827 and 1829. Some of Jefferson’s enslaved descendants eventually fought in the Civil War « to make the United States live up to Jefferson’s words. »
The volume sets the death of and pubic mourning for our seventh president, Andrew Jackson (June 8, 1845) within the context of 19th-century mourning culture, at time when « death was a familiar companion. » But the author also sets Jackson and the mourning for him within the ferociously partisan politics of the period. Whig partisans attacked him in death as in life. He « remained a divisive figure just as he had been a polarizing presence innovational politics. » His at times violent and abusive behavior further exacerbated his politically polarizing persona. Of course, Democrats eulogized him. And, after the Civil War, Jackson’s stature rose. In the 20th century, he became « a crucial part of a long populist and popular Democratic tradition, » a link between Jefferson and FDR. More recently, however, the partisan pendulum has swung again. Jackson and his era have been reevaluated, especially when such factors as Indian removal and the spread of slavery are factored back in to the history. (The author does not make the precise analogy, but in important respects Jackson was the Trump of his time, an outsider – albeit a military hero, unlike Trump – who represented a populist anti-establishment turn in American politics and unsurprisingly polarized the country’s politics.)
Zachary Taylor (July 9, 1850) our 12th – and second Whig – president, died, unexpectedly, after little more than a year in office. A high-stature, popular career soldier, Taylor tried to transcend party politics, and that seems to have contributed to how he was mourned and remembered. Even now, he is remembered and celebrated (if at all) more as a general than as a president, and as a president who tried to ignore the deepening crisis in American politics.
Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday 1865, literally days after Lee’s surrender, and his famously over-the-top multi-city funeral are all very familiar. This chapter tries to capture the intensely emotional effect – expressed in the wholesale immersion in mourning – which Lincoln’s quasi-martyrdom had primarily on pro-Union northerners and on newly emancipated African Americans. (In contrast « Confederates contradicted comforting visions of universal grief.) The chapter reminds us of the different ways Lincoln has been remembered and used – for example, in the Jim Crow era and in the Civil Right era – and how the ultimate meaning of the Civil War remains seemingly unresolved.
Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, now widely vilified as one of our worst presidents. Impeached (and acquitted) in 1868, he was reelected to his old Senate seat early in 1875 (the only ex-president ever to serve in the Senate), before dying on July 31. President Grant proclaimed national mourning, and Johnson had a grand funeral in Tennessee. Johnson’s « legacy rose with Jim Crow and racial segregation, » but has since declined. Formed in the Jim Crow era’s favorable assessment of Johnson, President Harry Truman spoke at the dedication of a North Carolina monument to Johnson. The author suggests that Truman may also have « identified with the burden of following a larger-than-life predecessor who died in office. »
Larger-than-life likewise characterized Theodore Roosevelt, who died January 6, 1919, less than six months after the death of one of his sons in France in World War I. Conveniently abroad at the time, President Woodrow Wilson, who had only won in 1912 because TR’s third-party candidacy had split the Republican vote, but who did not particularly care for TR, proclaimed national mourning and lowered flags on federal buildings for 30 days. Millions gathered across the country to honor TR on the national day of mourning. Many monuments were dedicated to his memory. Until recently, a monumental statue of him stood in front of NY’s Museum of Natural History, a tribute to our first conservation president. His grandest memorial is, of course, Mount Rushmore, where he joined Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln in 1939. That site, however, is controversially on land which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 ruled had been illegally seized and for which the Sioux Nation should be compensated.
The next president to be considered is Herbert Hoover, who died on October 20, 1964. By then, there had been two more presidential funerals of far greater significance, which will be treated in the next two chapters. Hoover had a distinguished pre-presidential career and a deserved reputation on as a humanitarian, but his catastrophic failure as president during the Great Depression complicated his legacy. « Hard work, diligent networking, and skilled self-promotion had enabled Hoover to recapture much of his early image as a nonpartisan public servant and self-made man. Yet the Great Depression-era president rejected by the electorate ha don’t entirely vanished. » Hoover had a full state funeral, complete with lying-in-state and the Capitol – the first since Taft’s in 1930. His reputation never fully recovered, however, and subsequent interest in him has been modest.
Hoover’s nemesis, considered by many to be the greatest U.S. President, was Franklin D. Roosevelt, our 32nd president and the only one to serve more than two terms. The story of his presidency – spanning both the Great Depression and the Second World War – is a familiar one. His lengthy service and the crises he confronted, together with the timing and circumstances of FDR’s death, have defined his legacy. FDR’s obsequies included a long train trip from WarmSprings to Washington, where a. horse-drawn caisson took him to the White House for a short service in the East Room, then back to Union Station for the final train trip to Hyde park where he was buried. The whole thing was done in just a few days. Its simplicity combined Roosevelt’s preferences and the exigencies of wartime. Even so, the public movements offered an opportunity highlight the intense bond between FDR and his fellow citizens, which is what, I suspect, made the event so especially memorable for many.
John Fr. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 and his funeral are even more familiar – at least to my boomer generation, for which it proved to e a defining event. The chapter on Kennedy focuses almost entirely on African American reactions. Subsequent mythology notwithstanding, civil rights had not been one of JFK’s big priorities for most of his presidency. That said, « African Americans reacted significantly more intensely than white. » Given the intensity of the national – and international – reaction to JFK’s untimely death, that is certainly saying a lot! This chapter’s treatment of the relatively under-studied AfricanAmerican response to Kennedy is interesting and a valuable contribution to the study of race in the U.S. Personally, however, I missed any treatment of other aspects of the Kennedy phenomenon, such as the unexpected creation of the Camelot myth and how effectively it has been sustained over time. Given that JFK was the first Catholic president and that the funeral took a Catholic ritual form (albeit in the unfortunate form of a Low Mass), the religious aspects of the ritual also deserve further study. The act that some suggested a purely secular funeral highlights this. That the funeral took place in a church, rather than in East Room, reflected Roman catholic expectations, but also seems to have started a trend, in that all subsequent presidential funerals have involved a service in a church, which had not always been he case in the past. All this highlights the complex interplay of religion and politics in this constitutionally secular but historically most religious modern democracy.
Modern longevity has increased the length of many post-presidencies. Like Hoover, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush died in old age, after being out of the public eye for a while (more so for Reagan because of his dementia, less so perhaps for Bush because of his family’s continued political importance and his son’s service as president.)
« The Long Goodbye » aptly captures its subject, highlighting first Regan’s lengthy final illness and consequent disappearance form public view, and then the lengthy mourning that followed Regan’s death, « a week in which Ronald Reagan commanded national attention. » A new tradition of lengthy, protracted funerals, with full national media attention, was taking hold – in sharp contrast to the comparatively quick pace of the FDR and JFK funerals. In the post 9/11 world, security was higher than in the past, as 25 heads of state and 180 other foreign representatives converged on Washington. One of the more memorable comments – especially so in light of what has happened since – was Senator Lindsey Graham’s observation that Regan had replaced « the scowling face of conservatism with an easy smile, a common touch, and a sense of humor. »
The final study deals with the funeral of George H.W. Bush, who died November 30, 2018. Modern longevity made Bush the longest living ex-president, a title pervious held by Ronald Reagan – and before that by John Adams! Long-lived ex-presidents have plenty of opportunity to plan and prepare for their funerals, which Bush did with plans « added to a huge binder. » In the 19th-century, only Lincoln’s funeral had involved long travel passing through and stopping at several cities. In the 21st-century, Regan and Bush made the prolonged, multi-city, national funeral the norm. In keeping with Bush’s low-key but genuine Episcopalianism, the funeral included a church service in each city, including at Washington’s National Cathedral. Bush’s post-presidency had included collaboration in humanitarian projects with his Democratic successor, Bill Clinton. « This friendship across political lines, in contrast to the polarizing political climate at the end of Bush’s life, inspired a feeling of nostalgia. People longed for the time when he two parties could work together, and governing officials appeared capable of getting things done. » Coming midway through the Trump presidency, this became the prevailing leitmotif of the Bush funeral week and how it is now largely remembered.
Presidential funerals have evolved as the nation has. Today’s funerals for former presidents look « strikingly like the funerals for kings. » In this, as in so much else connected with the presidency, Washington set a precedent. « The plain funeral he desired never took place, replaced instead by one more useful to those he left behind. »
