After seeing the 5 living Presidents at The George W Bush
Presidential Library, I got to thinking, is 4 a lot? It is a lot to be in
the same place at the same time, but it’s only the upper average to be alive at
one time. Seems about 2-4 is pretty standard.
Of course George
Washington was the only one alive until John Adams, but 3 years into Adams term
he became the only one when the original George W died in 1799.
After George's
death there wasn't another Presidential death until July 4, 1826, but
it was a doozy, when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day.
But on July 3, 1826 Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all alive during
the first year and a half John Quincy Adams' term making 5 living
Presidents.
While
Jackson was in the White House the number was at 4 until Madison and
Monroe died in 1836 and 1831 respectively leaving only 2.
 |
| Andrew Jackson, 1845 |
For about a month
in 1841 there were 4 again, but William Henry Harrison became the first
president to died in office shortly after his inauguration, but his Vice
President John Tyler finished his term becoming the first President to never be
elected president making it 3 elected Presidents and 4 total.
James K. Polk was
President while 5 presidents were alive from his inauguration on April 4, 1845
until Andrew Jackson died on June, 8 1845. When Zachary Taylor
took office in 1849 it was back to 4 until Polk died 4 years and a week after
his protégé, Jackson, leaving only 3 living presidents.
During the Civil
War the living President total hit its height of 6 until 1862, when
both John Tyler and Martin Van Buren died. Tyler, the only southerner of
the 6, sided with the Confederacy, even serving in the Confederate Legislature.
After 1862 the
number of living Presidents fluctuated between 3 and 4 (except during
Grover Cleveland’s term when Chester Arthur was the only other and
Franklin Roosevelt's term when Herbert Hoover was the only other)
until the 1990's when Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan,
and George H W Bush, lived in to the Clinton Administration making 6
again. Nixon died in 1994, but when George W Bush
was inaugurated the number went back to 6. When Ford and Reagan
both died during W Bush's term we were back to 4. As Barack Obama took
office the number is back to 5 and hopefully holds there and goes up.
While I can't find
anything saying that 5 Presidents have been in the same room together, I doubted
it. The majority of the time we had that many alive was in the 19th
century when travel for men of that age would have been prohibitive.
If anyone knows of
a equal size or larger gathering, comment and let me know. Just because I
couldn't find it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents
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