November 25, 1885: Thomas Andrews Hendricks, Vice President of the United States, dies in Indianapolis. He was 66 years old.
He was born on September 7, 1819, in Fultonham, Ohio. The family moved to Indiana at the urging of an uncle, William Hendricks, who served that State in both houses of Congress, and eventually as Governor. His father, John Hendricks, became a success in farming, then in running a general store, and moved into politics, where his support for President Andrew Jackson earned him a political appointment. Young Thomas got to meet nearly every prominent Democrat in Indiana at the family home in Shelbyville.
He married Eliza Morgan, the daughter of a judge, and they had a son named Morgan, who died at age 3. He was elected to the General Assembly in 1847, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850, was appointed Commissioner of the U.S. General Land Office by President Franklin Pierce in 1855, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1862.
Three times, he ran for Governor, and lost twice, going back to the practice of law in the State capital of Indianapolis, before finally being elected in a squeaker in 1872. He did well enough there that he was nominated for Vice President on the ticket of Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Although they got the most popular votes and the most Electoral Votes, they didn't not get the required majority of the latter, and a Commission to settle the issue did so in favor of the Republican nominee, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio.
He fell into ill health, but this was not widely known, and, in 1884, he was again nominated as the 2nd half of a ticket whose 1st half was the Governor of New York, in this case Grover Cleveland.
His father-in-law, Judge Morgan, had lived outside Cincinnati, in North Bend, Ohio, next-door to President William Henry Harrison, the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. Running on the Whig Party ticket in 1840, with John Tyler, there came the 1st rhyming slogan in Presidential history: "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!"
In 1844, the Whigs had, "Hurrah! Hurrah! The Country's risin', for Henry Clay and Frelinghuysen!" In 1876, the Republicans had "Hayes the True and Wheeler, too!" In 1884, the Democrats may have tried too hard, with:
We'll shout for our man and his important appendix!
We'll whoop 'er up lively for Cleveland and Hendricks!
(There haven't been too many rhyming Presidential slogans since. In 1936, the Republicans had "Off the rocks with Landon and Knox," and lost 46 out of 48 States. In 1952 and 1956, instead of trying to rhyme something with "Eisenhower and Nixon," the Republicans simply used Dwight D. Eisenhower's nickname: "I like Ike." In 1960, the Democrats had "All the way with JFK" and "K-E-Double-N-E-D-Y, Jack's the nation's favorite guy," and followed it in 1964 with "All the way with LBJ.")
The 1884 election between Cleveland and the Republican nominee, former Secretary of State James G. Blaine, was nasty by the standards of the time -- although Donald Trump might have called it "low-energy." The Cleveland-Hendricks ticket won in a very close race. Taking office on March 4, 1885, the 2 men maintained a strong working relationship. Hendricks spoke highly of Cleveland's character, and described him as "courteous and affable."
But Hendricks' poor health caught up with him. In November, he went home to Indianapolis. On the morning of November 24, he complained about feeling ill. He suffered a heart attack the next day, and was dead.
There being no Constitutional mechanism for filling a vacancy in the Vice Presidency at the time, the office remained vacant until the following Inauguration Day, March 4, 1889, when Levi P. Morton took the office, on a ticket with Benjamin Harrison (William Henry's grandson), who had defeated Cleveland and his new running mate, Allen Thurman.
And with Congress not convening until December, the office of the next man in line for the Presidency, after Cleveland, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, was vacant as well. This was the 7th time in 44 years that the Vice Presidency had become vacant, and it was decided to do something about it.
Congress convened on December 7, 1885, and John Sherman of Ohio, brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman, was sworn in as President Pro Tempore of the Senate. A new Presidential Succession Act was passed on January 19, 1886. From then onward, the net man in line was the Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard. Since it was believed that the office of Secretary of State would always be filled, the issue was thought settled. But it was adjusted by a new Presidential Succession Act in 1947, putting the Speaker of the House and then President Pro Tempore of the Senate between the Vice President and the Cabinet.
Hendricks was buried in Crown Point Cemetery in Indianapolis. Harrison would also be buried there, as would Theodore Roosevelt's Vice President, Charles W. Fairbanks; Woodrow Wilson's Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall; authors James Whitcomb Riley and Booth Tarkington; bank robber John Dillinger, pharmaceutical magnate Eli Lilly; and Indianapolis Colts owner Bob Irsay.
Eliza Hendricks lived on until 1903.
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November 25, 1885 was a Wednesday. There were no scores on this historic day: No college football games were scheduled, baseball was out of season, hockey was in its infancy, and basketball hadn't yet been invented.
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