Attacking the President
On a rainy May 6th Spring day, the president and part of the Cabinet took the steamboat Cygnet down the Potomac to Fredericksburg. The occasion? To lay a cornerstone for a monument to George Washington's mother. Shortly before her death Congress had passed a resolution to erect a monument. Forty-four years later it had finally gotten around to the cornerstone. Some say the opposite of progress is Congress.

As the boat tied up for a stop at Alexandria, many swarmed on board. The president sat at a table in a cabin, reading a newspaper. A man came in and began removing his gloves. The president, not recognizing him and supposing he was going to be saluted, stretched out his hand, saying, "Never mind your glove, sir." Instead, he suddenly punched the president directly in the face. Before he could attempt another, the president's nephew struck him with an umbrella. The president got out of his seat and reached for his cane, yelling "What, Sir! What, Sir!" intending to strike him. But two of the president's other associates hustled the man, one Robert Randolph, out the door before the president or his nephew could harm him.

Randolph and his friends made their escape and retired to a tavern for a few minutes, as one does, before crossing out of the District of Columbia. A warrant and subsequently a bench warrant were issued for his arrest.

Randolph had been a lieutenant, holding the job of purser on the famous Constitution, but was court-martialed for embezzlement. Acquitted, he was nevertheless fired on the president's orders.

Randolph actually connected with a different notable presidential story, the Eaton Affair, in which the cabinet wives socially ostracized John Eaton, the Secretary of War, and his wife Peggy, disapproving of the circumstances surrounding their marriage and what they considered her failure to meet the moral standards of a cabinet wife. The Randolph connection? In taking the purser job he replaced John Timberlake, Peggy Eaton's first husband, whose death had led to the rest of the controversy. To this day, it's not known whether it was Timberlake or Randolph, or both, who had dipped into the ship funds, only that the books didn't line up. Randolph got the blame.

The bloody-faced president was not seriously hurt, but stormed about, furious and swearing. Later he would say "Had I been apprised that Randolph stood before me, I should have been prepared for him, and I could have defended myself. No villain has ever escaped me before; and he would not, had it not been for my confined situation."

He continued on to Fredricksburg and laid the cornerstone. He might have saved himself the trouble. In the end that monument was never built. After about sixty years, what had been started was torn down. In 1894, President Cleveland laid a new cornerstone for the monument that still stands there today.

What eventually happened to Randolph is lost in the sands of time. His trial took a long time. The president was already out of office. Learning of it, the former president wrote to the sitting one "I have to this old age complied with my mother's advice to 'indict no man for assault and battery or sue him for slander', and to fine or imprison Randolph would be no gratification." He was asking that Randolph, if found guilty, be pardoned. It seems likely, then, that Randolph punched a president and got away with it.

Which president was it, who got himself punched in 1833? By now you know, right?

Andrew Jackson

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