First Children
The creepiest, toughest and wildest presidential kids.
by Liza Featherstone
November 3, 2008
Most Unjustly Criticized
Robert Lincoln was a university student in the early years of the Civil War, drawing fire from some contemporaries. One editorialist fumed: "Is an education more necessary in his case than with the sons of other people? Verily, he who has done so much to call the youth of the nation to arms should let his own son set the example."
Robert Lincoln: his generation's Private Ryan.
Such polemics weren't fair to the young Lincoln, who was eager to fight. His parents, who'd already lost one child to typhoid, were understandably eager to spare their eldest. Robert did eventually prevail, serving in the Union Army right after he graduated from Harvard.
Best Use of the White House
Irwin McDowell Garfield, according to Doug Wead's 2004 book All the Presidents' Children (a great source for gossip and insight on this subject), used to ride down the White House staircases on his bicycle.
Wildest
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy, had a pillow with her personal motto emblazoned in needlepoint: "If you can't say something good about someone, come sit by me." The president, exhausted by his daughter's many Oval Office interruptions, once said, "I can run the country or attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both." She chewed gum, appeared in public with a pet snake, smoked, gambled at the racetrack, shot at telegraph poles from a train and played poker. When the Roosevelts moved out of the White House in 1909, Alice buried a voodoo doll of Nelly Taft, the incoming first lady, in the White House lawn. A congressman's wife described Alice at a White House party a couple years later, holding "the very scant skirt quite high, and when the band played, kicked about and moved her body sinuously like a shining leopard cat."
©2008 Liza Featherstone and Babble
About the Author
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Liza Featherstone is a contributing writer to The Nation. Her work has appeared in Nerve, Salon, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue and NYLON. She's the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic Books, 2004). She lives in New York City with her husband and son. |
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