Today is Presidents Day, a day when we honor the men who have led this country in a very modern fashion: By scrambling to find childcare. North Carolina has had three (?) presidents who were born here, and one who tried to dramatically alter the landscape. So as a service, I’ve written up a few pieces of trivia for you to—HEY WILL YOU KIDS BE QUIET, DADDY’S TRYING TO WORK!
George Washington really tried to drain the swamp
(Linda Richman Voice) The Great Dismal Swamp is no longer great. It’s no longer dismal. And it’s no longer swampy. Discuss.
I learned all of this when I went out there for an episode of Away Message back in 2017. There are plenty of yellow biting flies and ticks. The woods were once so thick and foreboding that escaped slaves lived there, knowing that their owners wouldn’t go in to look for them. And today, the land is nowhere near as swampy as it used to be.
That’s partly because of George Washington. In 1763, long before he was president, Washington was a land speculator, and he visited the swamp. It was, in the words of catty-as-hell surveyor William Byrd II, “a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit.” Byrd was the man who drew the North Carolina-Virginia border in 1728, although he himself went around it, while sending his underlings straight through to do the dirty work of drawing a line.
Washington was interested in draining the land, selling the timber, and offering up the real state to farmers when he was finished. He did have some enslaved people dig drainage canals, but it wasn’t enough to completely drain the swamp, and Washington’s grand plan never really came to pass. Anyway, he went off to fight in the Revolutionary War and went on to lead the country after that. Over time, though, the swamp did shrink, and today only about 10% of it is left. The best part of it, I regret to tell you, is in Virginia. Damn you, William Byrd II. If only you’d drawn your line a few miles to the north.
Andrew Johnson was our greatest president, and not one person disputes that
What does it take to twist your brain into enough of a knot to believe that Raleigh’s Andrew Johnson was a terrific president? Not as much as you, a normal person, would think! I wrote about this ahead of Presidents Day last year. Just read the rationalization and let it wash over you like a warm bath:
How do we feel about Andrew Jackson, then
He sucks. But maybe he wasn’t born here, which would be nice.
Also:
Abraham Lincoln was born in Rutherford County, which is also a thing that nobody disputes
Seriously, there’s a museum out in the small town of Bostic that make the claim that Lincoln was born there, and not in Kentucky. The evidence is circumstantial, but a plaque on a rock says it happened, so that’s enough for me!
Rock out to the dulcet tones of James K. Polk
One of my favorite bands of all time is They Might Be Giants, and one of my favorite songs of theirs is about our 11th president, James K. Polk, who was born in Pineville. As the kids say, it slaps.
How, exactly, does a band come up with a song like this? According to the band’s John Flansburgh, it materialized because of a dare:
“James K. Polk” is a song John put together with our mutual friend Mathew Hill. I was actually childhood friends with Mathew. They were having a conversation about like, why can’t you just write a completely fact-based song? And “James K. Polk” is an example of really just pouring a bunch of kind of uninspiring historical facts into a biographical song. There’s no editorializing in the song. They kind of left out the part about James K. Polk being evil. But that wouldn’t have been true to the experiment of the song.
I’m so glad that They Might Be Giants later redeemed themselves with a tribute to a true hero: Roy G. Biv.