Presidents Day was February 15, 2016. I can remember when there was no Presidents Day so to speak and that February was a time to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both who had birthdays this month.
Some have said that General Washington, as he was referred to, was the more important of the two and it is true that this Presidents day did hit right on his birthday.
However, he was no more important than President Lincoln whose birthday was earlier in the month. Lincoln’s birthday was February 12.
When I was a boy, if you were a teacher, you could choose if you wanted President Lincoln’s picture or President Washington’s picture hanging in your classroom. You had to have one of the two.
Once in a while you would catch a glimpse of President McKinley who was assassinated close to the turn of the 1899 to 1912 timeframe. McKinley’s picture was not seen often.
It was not until President Kennedy was assassinated that pictures in school rooms changed. Gone in many rooms were Washington and Lincoln and in their place, John F. Kennedy, our young martyred President.
Later Washington and Lincoln pictures came back in vogue and today, it is surprising to see a classroom with pictures of any President in it!
General George Washington was known as the man who won the Revolutionary War for the side of what was to be the United States. To say he was a military genius was not to measure in small terms, his importance to that war.
After the war he wanted to go to his plantation on the Potomac River and raise cotton but his citizens called for him to be the first President. Although he gave most of the land or had the government buy the land for the National Capital in what is now Washington D.C., he never lived or governed from Washington. He mainly governed from New York.
However, he was so interested in what was going to be the nation’s capital that he helped design the large avenues coming out of Capital Hill like spokes off a wagon wheel. He chose where the White House was to be built, but it was then
called the Executive Mansion.
It got the name “White House” after part of it was burned by the British in the War of 1812 and white paint was used to cover the burned marks on the exterior walls.
It was George Washington who choose not to run for three terms, making it impossible for those after him to run for more than two terms. Not until Franklin Roosevelt ran for a third term had anyone dared to run for a third term. Well FDR won it and went on to win a Fourth term and died early in that term. After that Congress passed a law limiting Presidents to two terms period.
President Lincoln, a sort of dark and somber man, and with a bad marriage to deal with and a son who died while he was President, did what he had to do to win the Civil War. Win it he did and was just looking forward to a spring of mending the once great nation when on April 14 he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington where he and his wife had gone to see a play.
Strangely, Lincoln seemed to know he would be assassinated. He knew it for months. So did his wife.
That period of time in the United States so profoundly affected so many that the newly invented Aladdin Lamp Company was making a milk glass lantern that was designed to look like the black crape that went around Lincoln’s coffin. That lamp is a highly sought after collector’s item today and is called the “Presidential Drape Lamp”. That lamp had another connection to the Presidency of the United States for when Warren Harding died in office, Calvin Coolidge’s father held up a “Presidential Drape Lamp” as he gave the oath of office to his son who had just become President of the United States.
There are so many references even today to Presidents Washington and Lincoln that it is fitting that we honor them with a February holiday every year.
I think they would be happy about that and once and all the bickering stopped about which to honor at which date, Lincoln on February 12 or Washington on February 22.
I think they would be much happier with both being honored on one day in February and a Monday to boot giving their citizens a three day weekend in February!
