The White House Welcomes its First President

On November 1, 1800, John Adams arrived in Washington, DC, and became the first president to occupy the unfinished Executive Mansion.

The capital had only recently relocated from Philadelphia, and the city was a raw, muddy construction site with scattered buildings amid forests and swamps. Adams rode into town unceremoniously, accompanied by a small entourage, and took up residence in the damp, plaster-strewn house designed by James Hoban. The structure lacked basic amenities; staircases were unfinished, and the drafty rooms echoed with busy laborers.  When Abigail Adams, joined the president a few weeks later, she used the East Room to hang laundry.

The move to Washington was fraught with personal and political strain for Adams. He was just about to lose the election of 1800 to Thomas Jefferson and become a lame-duck president. He departed the Mansion—surreptitiously—on the eve of Jefferson’s inauguration in March 1801.

During his time there, Adams slept in a sparse bedroom, and the family dined amid unpacked crates. Despite the discomfort, he perceived the residence to be a beacon of republican stability. In a letter to Abigail before her arrival, he expressed hope for the house’s future, famously writing on November 2, “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”  The benediction was later carved into a mantel in the State Dining Room.

Adams’s short stay delineated the White House’s humble beginnings as the seat of executive power. He conducted official business there, including signing the Judiciary Act of 1801, but the isolation of the location was eerie and profound. Abigail thought of Washington as a “howling wilderness.” When they left, the house remained far from the iconic symbol it would become, but their occupancy established a precedent for presidential life in the capital of the young republic.

For more information, the Grateful American Book Prize recommends David McCullough’s John Adams.

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The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open-top limousine through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, during a political trip intended to mend fences within the Democratic Party ahead of the 1964 election. As the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository, shots were fired. Kennedy was struck in the neck and head and slumped into the lap of his wife, Jacqueline. Texas Governor John Connally, who was seated in front of the president, was also wounded, but he survived. Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. CST, at age 46. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president aboard Air Force One, two hours later, while Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her bloodstained pink suit, stood beside him.

The official investigation, conducted by the Warren Commission, appointed by President Johnson, and chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded in its 1964 report that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine and Marxist sympathizer who had defected to and returned from the Soviet Union, acted alone as the assassin. Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository using a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle he owned; two bullets struck Kennedy, and one missed. The commission’s ‘single-bullet theory’ explained how one projectile passed through Kennedy’s neck and caused Connally’s multiple wounds.

Oswald was arrested shortly after for killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, but two days later, while being transferred from police headquarters, he was fatally shot on live television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, powering up immediate speculation about a broader conspiracy. The assassination shocked the nation, the world, and initiated a decade of distrust in government institutions. While the Warren Commission’s findings remain the official record, polls consistently show a majority of Americans believe others were involved, citing motives ranging from CIA resentment over the Bay of Pigs to Mafia retaliation for Robert Kennedy’s crackdowns. Declassified documents, including those released under the 1992 JFK Records Act, have revealed intelligence failures and agency cover-ups of unrelated matters, but with no definitive proof of conspiracy. The tragedy, however, secured Kennedy’s posthumous mythic status, endless books, and films.

For more information, the Grateful American Book Prize recommends James Swanson’s End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Michael F. Bishop, a writer and historian, is the former executive director of the International Churchill Society and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

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History Matters is a feature courtesy of the Grateful American Book Prize, an annual award for high quality, 7th to 9th grade-level books dealing with important events and personalities in American history.