The Days of Heroes Are Over: A Transient Biography of Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson

Over the past 200 years, the nation has elected a wide range of colourful figures to nationwide workplace. Drunkards, racists, slave holders, philanderers, warfare heroes, populists, demagogues, humanitarians, misogynists, embezzlers, patriots, and nepotists, all have walked the halls of the Capitol and the White Home. But not often has a person been despatched to Washington who could possibly be outlined by all of these descriptors without delay. Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky was a kind of males. His heroic, controversial, and eccentric life made him infamous in his day, a tragic hero who walked the stage of American politics for nearly half a century. Col. Dick Johnson was the epitome of a frontier Republican from the early a part of the nineteenth century. Born right into a politically lively household which had migrated west through the Revolution, his early years had been formed by the Indian warfare that plagued the area. He himself achieved notoriety because of his successes towards the nice Native chief Tecumseh on the Battle of the Thames, allegedly killing the war-chief himself. Johnson then went on to serve in varied positions within the authorities, always being concerned within the development of the nation. His eccentricities as Vice President, when mixed along with his scandalous relationships with varied African American girls, resulted in his eventual damnatio memoriae. This biography seeks to fill the hole within the historic document, inspecting the life and accomplishments of one in every of America’s extra storied Vice Presidents. David R. Petriello has taught and written on varied topics in American historical past. His specialties embody army historical past, the impression of illness upon historical past and society, and nineteenth political thought. Current publications by the writer embody A Navy Historical past of New Jersey, Micro organism and Bayonets: The Affect of Illness in American Navy Historical past, and an upcoming work on illness and the American presidency.