Study Break:

What are they talking about? Solution

1. An older and wiser George Washington was talking about a remark attributed to him in the August 1754 issue of London Magazine. A correspondent quoted the 22 year-old Washington as saying, "I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound," after his first taste of combat in the French and Indian War.
2. An under-whelmed John Adams was talking about becoming the first Vice President of the United States.
3. Abraham Lincoln was explaining to Secretary of State Seward why he had made two false starts before carefully signing the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in seceded states.
4. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had no formal military training, was talking about his strategy for winning Civil War battles. A persistent tradition, most likely apocryphal, states the self-educated Forrest actually said, "Git thar fustest with the mostest."
5. Abraham Lincoln was telling White House guard Colonel William H. Crook how he felt about going to see a play at Ford's Theatre that evening. Crook remembered vividly that Lincoln said, "Good-bye, Crook," as he departed. Lincoln had previously always said "good night." John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at the theatre.
6. Samuel J. Tilden was talking about winning the popular vote but lose the Presidency of the United States. In the 1876 election Tilden out-polled Rutherford B. Hayes by over 250,000 votes. However, the Republican Party disputed several Democratic ballots from three Southern states forcing the appointment of a special commission to decide the outcome of the election. The commission, voting 8-7 on strictly party lines, awarded each disputed state, and the Presidency, to Hayes by one electoral vote.
7. General William Tecumsah Sherman was defining "war" in a speech at the Ohio State Fair.
8. Charles J. Guiteau was writing about why he intended to assassinate President James Garfield that afternoon. Guiteau shot and mortally wounded Garfield in a railway station.
9. Herbert Hoover was making an overly optimistic assessment of the Great Depression. The depression would continue until World War II.
10. Chicago's Mayor Anton J. Cermak said this after he was mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet intended for President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during a motorcade in Miami, Florida. Cermak was talking to Roosevelt. Justice was swifter in 1933. The assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, was tried and executed in the electric chair less than five weeks later.
11. Neville Chamberlain was talking to his supporters from a window at Number 10 Downing Street. He had just returned from negotiations with Adolph Hitler. "Peace for our time" lasted eleven months. World War II broke out on September 1, 1939.
12. Harry S. Truman was talking about how he felt when he learned President Franklin Roosevelt had died and he was now President of the United States.
13. President Eisenhower was responding to a reporter's question asking him to name a major decision in which Vice-President and current Republican Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had participated.
14. Only minutes after the event, Gerald Ford was talking about having been sworn in as President following Richard Nixon's resignation.
15. Ronald Reagan wrote this note to his doctors after surgery following John Hinkley's assassination attempt.

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