On May 22, 1856, Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a metal-tipped cane, leaving Sumner seriously injured. Brooks received a $300 fine.

The incident started when Senator Sumner, an abolitionist from Massachusetts, went on a two-day rant on the Senate floor after an incident in Kansas.

Sumner made fun of Brooks’ relative, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, who had suffered from a stroke, and he used language that compared the South’s use of slavery to prostitution.

During Sumner’s speech, Senator Stephen Douglas told a colleague, “That damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool.”

Brooks had a history of violence—he used the cane because he was hurt in a political duel in 1840.

An irate Representative Brooks sought advice from fellow South Carolina Representative Laurence M. Keitt, who talked Brooks out of a duel, because he believed Sumner wasn’t worthy of the honor.

Instead, Brooks confronted Sumner on a nearly empty Senate floor, as Sumner was stamping copies of his “Crime Against Kansas” speech.

Brooks beat the defenseless Sumner to a pulp as Keitt stood by with a drawn gun.

The incident made heroes of both men in the Northern and Southern press. The New York Times sent a champion bare-knuckles boxer to cover Congress as a reporter. Admirers in the South mailed canes to Brooks and held banquets in his honor.

“We are rejoiced. The only regret we feel is that Mr. Brooks did not employ a slave whip instead of a stick,” said the Richmond (Virginia) Whig, echoing the sentiments of some Southern newspapers.

Sumner survived the attack, but he didn’t return to the Senate for three years. His desk remained empty as a symbol of a divided nation. After his return in 1860, Sumner served in the Senate until his death in 1874.

Brooks was later challenged to a duel by another politician, but backed out at the last moment. Brooks died in 1857 from the croup, after he had been expelled from the House and then re-elected.

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Edmund Ross

Johnson succeeded the presidency in 1865 after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. A former Democrat who ran as a candidate alongside Lincoln, President Johnson’s relationship with the GOP leadership quickly crumbled.

A faction called the Radical Republicans, led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, dominated the GOP.

On February 24, 1868, President Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives. The House charged Johnson with violating the Tenure of Office Act.

The alleged violation stemmed from Johnson’s decision to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a prominent Radical Republican left over from the Lincoln Cabinet. To block Johnson from removing Cabinet members without its approval, the House passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867.

Johnson challenged the act by firing Stanton and appointing an interim replacement. The House quickly filed 11 impeachment charges, sending the case to the Senate for disposition.

Two-thirds of the Senate was needed to convict Johnson, and the Republicans made up more than two-thirds of its members. Chief Justice Salmon Chase presided over the trial, which started in March and ended in  late May. Thaddeus Stevens was one of the House prosecutors.

In the end, however, seven Republican senators voted against impeachment.

The dramatic scene would have fit right in with the movie Lincoln, with the outcome seemingly in doubt until the last undecided vote was cast.

“It is a singular fact that not one of the actors in that high scene was sure in his own mind how his one senator was going to vote, except, perhaps, himself,” said historian David Miller Dewitt.

The key day in the trial was May 16. The anti-Johnson forces were counting on a guilty vote on 11th and last article of impeachment. It was the first order of business and a summary of the other 10 articles. If President Johnson was found guilty in the first vote, he was out of office.

Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas cast the deciding vote, and for all purposes, he was expected to vote against Johnson, up until the night before the final roll call.

The chamber was stunned when Ross said “Not guilty.” The Radical Republicans asked for an adjournment until May 26, partly because of an upcoming party conventions, but also because they had no plan of attack after assuming Johnson wouldn’t survive the first vote. After failing at two other attempts on May 26, two more articles failed, and the trial ended.

The controversy, to this day, is why did Ross change his mind?

There were two serious constitutional issues involved in the trial. One was that some people didn’t think the Tenure of Office Act was constitutional. The other was that the Constitution, at that point, didn’t specify who became vice president when the president died or couldn’t serve.

If Johnson had been impeached, the Senate president pro tempore, Benjamin Wade, would have assumed the duties of the office until the next election. Wade had his own enemies within the Republican Party, including Ross (who saw Wade taking away his patronage powers in Kansas).

One theory is that Ross didn’t follow his constitutional conscience—he followed the cash. Ross may have been the beneficiary of a $150,000 slush fund set up by Johnson’s supporters.

In a 1999 article for Slate, writer David Greenberg pointed out another fact: Ross’s vote may not have been needed.

“At least four other senators were prepared to oppose conviction had their votes been needed–a fact that has been forgotten, maybe, because it doesn’t square with the High Noon portrait of Ross as the man of principle facing down the mob,” Greenberg said.

In later years, Ross was portrayed as a hero in John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage. Others, like historian David O. Stewart, paint a less flattering portrait of Ross when it comes to allegations of bribery and patronage spoils.

Ross lost re-election after the Senate trial and later switched to the Democratic party. He blamed the Senate trial vote for hurting his political career.

Then in 1885, the first Democratic president to take office since the Civil War, Grover Cleveland, named Ross as the governor of the New Mexico territory.

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Jamestown depicted in 1624.

But Jamestown barely survived, as recent headlines about the confirmation of cannibalism at the colony confirm. The adaption to the North American continent by the early Europeans was extremely problematic.

The success of tobacco as an early cash crop helped Jamestown weather the loss of most early colonists to disease, starvation, and attacks by the resident population of Native Americans.

A turning point in Jamestown’s fortunes was in 1619, when a General Assembly met at a church on July 30. Two representatives from 11 regions of the area debated the qualifications of membership and other matters for six days. A heat wave ended the session of what would be known as the House of Burgesses.

The session established a government that citizens could address to settle grievances and end legal disputes.

It was a huge step forward, since numerous European attempts to establish any foothold in North America had failed for almost a century.

Spain has tried to establish at least five colonial settlements in North America during the 16th century. It had established footholds in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Peru.

But Spanish efforts failed in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia, in short order.

The settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape in what is now Georgia or South Carolina was built in 1526 with the first use of African slaves in North America. It only lasted three months. The colonists dealt with same problems as the Jamestown residents, with the added dimension of a slave revolt.

Another Spanish attempt near St. Petersburg, Florida, failed in 1527.

Fort San Juan was another failed Spanish effort in what is now western North Carolina in 1566 and 1567. The fort was abandoned and most other troops at other forts died.

The Spanish also tried to set up a Jesuit mission in Virginia in 1570, which failed when it was left unprotected and its priests and brothers were killed.

France failed in three attempts, before Jamestown, to set up colonies in the current-day United States in South Carolina, Florida and Maine. The settlement at Sainte-Croix Island in 1604 quickly moved on to a fort at Port Royal in Nova Scotia, in order to survive. Half the settlers died at Port Royal, and the survivors moved on to what became Quebec.

And the English had two notable failures.

The Lost Colony of Roanoke was set up in 1585 and its first settlers lasted almost a year, until they went back to England with Sir Frances Drake. A small force was left to guard a fort.

A second expedition returned in 1587 to try again to establish a settlement. The guards were all missing. About 115 people stayed behind. When English ships returned three years later, all the people, and their buildings, were gone.

The Popham Colony in Maine was established at the same time as Jamestown but only lasted for one year.

There were some early colonies that did survive from the pre-Jamestown era.

The settlement at Saint Augustine in Florida endured since about 600 colonists from Spain established the settlement in September 1565. The town was burned several times by pirates and English forces, but it survived.

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The Battle of Churubusco.

On May 13, 1846, the United States Congress declared war on Mexico after a request from President James K. Polk. Then, on May 26, 1848, both sides ratified the peace treaty that ended the conflict.

In between those dates was enough drama to last for generations and the appearance of some familiar names that would dominate the Civil War, from President Abraham Lincoln to General Robert E. Lee.

To save space and make a long story short, the conflict centered on the independent Republic of Texas, which opted to join the United States after establishing its independence from Mexico a decade earlier.

The new U.S. president, James K. Polk, also wanted Texas as part of the United States, and his predecessor, John Tyler, had a late change of heart and started the admission process before he left office. Polk and others saw the acquisition of Texas, California, Oregon, and other territories as part of the nation’s Manifest Destiny to spread democracy over the continent.

The U.S. also tried to buy Texas and what was called “Mexican California” from Mexico, which was seen as an insult in Mexico, before war broke out.

Mexico considered the annexation of Texas as an act of war, and after border skirmishes, President Polk asked for the war declaration, since in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, only Congress can declare a war.

In the fighting that followed, the mostly volunteer United States military secured control of Mexico after a series of battles, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848.

It was the first large-scale success of a United States military force on foreign soil.

Mexico received a little more than $18 million in compensation from the United States as part of the treaty.

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The pact set a border between Texas and Mexico, and ceded California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming to the United States.

In today’s terms, those 10 states account for 136 electoral votes, more than half of the votes needed to secure a win a presidential election.

It also cut the territorial size of Mexico in half.

On the surface, the war’s outcome seemed like a bonanza for the United States. But the acquisition of so much territory with the issue of slavery unresolved lit the fuse that set off the Civil War in 1861.

The underlying issue of how adding new states and territories would alter the balance between free and slave states was critical.

The Missouri Compromise of 1850 attempted to appease Southern concerns about the shifting balances, but the die was cast as the nation headed toward the Civil War in 1861.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also set in motion a whole range of issues for Mexican-Americans and Native Americans.

During the conflict, one of the vocal objectors in the Whig party was Representative Abraham Lincoln from Illinois. Key players on the political side included Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas.

On the battlefield, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Stonewall Jackson were among the dozens of commanders who would later emerge in the Civil War.

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Truman was born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. He died at the age of 88 in Independence, Missouri in 1972.

1. Truman was a war hero who saw action in battle. Truman wanted to go to West Point, but poor eyesight kept him from the academy. He enlisted in the National Guard and was an artillery commander during World War I.

2. He wasn’t a success in private business. Truman worked at several jobs, including running a sewing supply shop, farming, and clerking at a bank, until he became a county judge in Missouri.

3. Truman wasn’t a first-choice candidate for the Senate. Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast was turned down by four other possible candidates in 1934 when he sought a candidate to support for a U.S. Senate election. Truman won office by actively hitting the campaign trail.

4. Truman overcame steep odds to win the 1940 Senate election. When Truman’s political ally, Pendergrast, was convicted for tax evasion in 1939, few people thought Truman stood a chance of getting re-elected in Missouri. Again, Truman hit the campaign trail, spoke about his war record and experience as a common man in the Senate, and pulled off another upset.

5. Truman used a key Senate committee to rise to power. At the age of 57, Truman took over a special committee to monitor wasteful spending at business, labor, and government agencies during the World War II. He quickly became a household name as the head of the “Truman Committee.”

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6. Truman wasn’t a top candidate for vice president. In 1944, the current vice president, Henry Wallace, was out of favor with many Democrats. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas was FDR’s preferred candidate, and Alben Barkley and James Byrnes were other strong candidates. Truman was a compromise selection who Roosevelt didn’t know well.

7. Roosevelt kept Truman in the dark about war matters. As vice president, Truman had little contact with the president and was asked to mostly deal with matters in the Senate. After FDR died, Truman had to find out the basic facts about the wars in Europe and Asia, and the nation’s secret atomic program.

8. The 1948 election upset wasn’t really an upset. Truman was expected to lose to Republican Thomas Dewey, at least in the eyes of the media. After trailing in public opinion polls, Truman launched an extensive national media campaign that put him back in contention. Before that point, pollsters stopped conducting polls, and didn’t measure the surge for Truman. The rest is history.

9. Truman survived an assassination attempt. Two Puerto Rico nationalists tried to kill Truman in 1950 when he was staying at Blair House while the White House was under renovation. A White House guard died as he killed one attacker. The other attacker was captured. Truman heard the gun fight from his room.

10. Truman had an unusual middle initial. Truman’s parents gave him a middle name of  “S” after they couldn’t agree on a middle name as a tribute to relatives whose names both started with the letter “S.” Officially, the “S” is followed by a period: “Harry S. Truman.” That’s because Truman used a period with the letter “S” in his correspondence. The Truman Library & Museum offers a detailed explanation of the “S” controversy.

On May 6, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that created the WPA, a federal assistance program aimed at putting Americans back to work at a time when unemployment was near 20 percent. At its peak, it employed 3.3. million Americans.

The WPA’s legacy is everywhere—its workers built or worked on hundreds of thousands of infrastructure projects, from roads and bridges to schools, parks, and hospitals.

The WPA also employed artists to create thousands of posters that promoted social ideals of the time as well as federal programs supporting education, culture, health, safety, and tourism.

As described by Posters for the People, a traveling exhibition about WPA posters, “Through their distinct imagery and clear and simple messages, the posters of the WPA provide a unique snapshot of an important era in America’s past.”

Today, many of those now-iconic posters are online, thanks to the Library of Congress and projects like Posters for the People.

Online today, the messages that tend to resonate are those about travel and reading. Here’s a sampling of 10 of the most popular, pinnable posters.

1. See America—Montana

2. A trip around the world

3. Understanding the arts

4. John is not really dull

5. See America—caverns

6. Be kind to books

7. Spare our trees

8. Read books in March

9. Wild life

10. Once upon a time

All images courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Source links: See America—Montana; A trip around the world; Understanding the arts; John is not really dull; See America—caverns; Be kind to books; Spare our trees; Read books in March; Wild life; Once upon a time.

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MGM stars in 1943.

Hollywood’s greatest drama took place over two decades in a fight that featured movie barons, President Franklin Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, and the United States Supreme Court.

In the end, the court ruled in U.S. vs. Paramount on May 4, 1948, in a devastating blow to five major studios and three smaller ones. The case had roots back to 1921, when concerns arose about the studios and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The major studios had a near monopoly on the movie business in the United States. Each studio had exclusive contracts with actors and directors; owned the theaters where their movies played; worked with each other to control how movies were shown in independent theaters; and in some cases, owned the companies that processed the film.

The system of “vertical integration” was expensive to maintain, but it was lucrative when the movie business was booming.

Independent movie makers and theater owners started legal action decades before the 1948 Supreme Court ruling.

The website Hollywood Renegades Archive has a detailed history of the 27-year fight that pitted movie titans like Adolph Zukor and Jesse Laskey against the Justice Department in the 1920s.

The Justice Department won the first round of the fight in 1930, when the Supreme Court ruled that the movies studios were monopolies. A key finding was that the process of “block booking” was illegal. In block booking, studios forced theaters to buy films as a group well in advance, and often without seeing them.

But the studios, after some legal delays, found an ear with incoming President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Claiming that the movie business was in dire straits during the Depression, the studios asked President Roosevelt to stop the forced breakup of the monopolies. After all, the nation needed movies as a relief from troubled times.

Roosevelt used the National Industrial Recovery Act to justify a delay. But the Supreme Court threw out the Recovery Act in 1935, and in 1938, the Justice Department filed a new lawsuit against the studios.

Again, the studios found a way out of losing their monopolies. In 1940, they reached a deal with the Justice Department in a consent decree. During a three-year trial, the studios could keep their movies theaters, but block booking was regulated and theater owners had a chance to see movies before they bought them.

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The decision enraged independent producers like Disney, Chaplin, David Selznick, Mary Pickford, and Orson Welles. They organized as a group, even though some would be defendants in the case because of their roles in United Artists, a studio that only distributed films.

The Justice Department, with the support of the independent producers, renewed the case in 1946. A federal district court in New York eliminated the studios’ ability to sell blocks of films, but it also let the studios keep their movie theaters.

Both sides appealed the case to the Supreme Court. In its 1948 ruling, the court effectively dismantled the Hollywood studio system.

In an opinion from Justice William O. Douglas, the court killed the block booking system, and recommended the breakup of the studio-theater monopolies. The justices asked the lower court to decide the issue of selling the theaters.

As the movie studios regrouped for another fight in the lower courts or another deal with the Justice Department, their unity in the case cracked. Maverick studio owner Howard Hughes of RKO Pictures decided to sell his movie theaters.

The Justice Department made it clear that no deals were coming, and then the biggest studio, Paramount, sold its movies theaters. Its involvement in the anti-trust case blocked its ability to buy into a new fad called television. The battle was over.

In the end, the Paramount case fueled the growth of television greatly, in addition to changing the movie business. RKO and other studios sold their film libraries to television stations to offset the losses from the Paramount case. The studios also released actors from contracts who became the new stars of the television world.

The audience for television grew tremendously as people stopped going to movie theaters. In 1948, about 90 million people were regular moviegoers. By 1958, that number fell to 46 million people. The audience for television grew to 204 million people in 1958.

Scott Bomboy is editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center.

Those were the words of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958, when he issued a proclamation urging the legal profession and the media to promote and participate in the celebration. Congress added Law Day to the federal code three years later.

Today, the American Bar Association helps to coordinate Law Day as a series of public and private events for people of all types, including educators and students who engage in activities that promote learning.

The theme of Law Day 2013 is the movement for civil and human rights in America. President Barack Obama has issued the annual Law Day proclamation to ““honor the courageous men and women who fought to bring those ageless ideals of freedom and fairness into the rule of law—from the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act to Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

By the way, the president is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and a former lecturer on constitutional law. In fact, 24 presidents were lawyers at some point in their careers.

And among the Founding Fathers, 35 of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were lawyers or had legal training.

In honor of Law Day, here’s a look at 10 people you may recognize who were lawyers at some point in their lives.

1. Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton was admitted to the bar when he was 25 years old and learned on the job. He had a successful firm, where he specialized in maritime litigation. Hamilton gave it up to enter public service, and returned to the firm in 1795 to pay for his expenses.

2. Aaron Burr

Burr was a formidable attorney in his own right and also appeared with Hamilton early in his career in court proceedings.(However, the legend that they were law partners isn’t true.) Maria Reynolds, the woman at the center of a sex scandal involving Hamilton, was represented by Burr in her divorce case. After leaving public life, Burr had a successful law practice.

3. Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s abilities as a lawyer were legendary even before he was elected president in 1860. Unlike Hamilton and Burr, Lincoln had little formal schooling. He also always had a law partner. Lincoln argued one case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which he lost. His skills were reading juries and making oral arguments.

4. Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi studied law in London, briefly practiced in India, and then he went to South Africa, where he spent two decades. Gandhi originally went there as a legal adviser, but his life changed as he became an advocate for the rights of the oppressed.

5. Clarence Darrow

Many people know the character of Darrow from the play and movie, Inherit the Wind, which is a fictionalized portrayal of the Scopes monkey trial. (His name was changed in the play to “Henry Drummond”.) His high-profile roles in the cases of accused murderers Leopold and Loeb, union leader Eugene Debs, and the McNamara brothers made him a household name.

6. Thurgood Marshall

The future Supreme Court justice had a stellar legal career. He was the chief legal counsel for the NAACP and won his first Supreme Court case at the age of 32. Marshall won 29 out of 32 cases he argued in front of the high court, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Marshall joined the Supreme Court in 1967 as its first African-American member.

7. Sandra Day O’Connor

O’Connor earned her law degree at Stanford, where she graduated third in her class in 1952. But O’Connor couldn’t get a job in a legal position at a California law firm because of her gender. (She reportedly had offers to be a secretary instead.) O’Connor took several positions as an attorney in public agencies and started her own law firm in Arizona in 1957. After a return to public service, O’Connor joined the Supreme Court in 1981 as its first female justice.

8. Janet Reno

Like President Obama, Reno is a Harvard Law graduate. She was a partner in a private Florida law firm before going into public service. In 1993, Reno became the first woman to be confirmed as the attorney general of the United States.

9. John Grisham

John Grisham isn’t really famous for his legal career. It is his series of bestselling books, which spawned several blockbuster movies, that are his biggest contributions to the legal community. He worked for a decade as a trial lawyer while pursuing an interest in writing. His second book, The Firm, became a national hit, and he’s sold more than 100 million books  in his writing career.

10. Nelson Mandela

The anti-apartheid icon was also a lawyer. He was the only black person in his law class and in 1952, Mandela and his partner, Oliver Tambo, established the first black law firm in South Africa. His role in the African National Congress soon eclipsed his legal career.

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USS Constitution

The Navy in its earliest form dates back to 1775, when it was established by the Continental Congress on October 13 in session in Philadelphia. The Navy considers this as its official birthdate.

However, after the Revolutionary War, the new nation sold its ships and sent its sailors home. It wasn’t until 1789 that the newly ratified Constitution empowered Congress to bring the Navy back.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution allowed Congress “to provide and maintain a Navy” as part of its enumerated powers. In Article II, the Constitution named the president as the commander in chief of the Army and the Navy.

It took until 1794 for Congress to approve money to buy new ships. Relations with the British, French, and Barbary pirates forced Congress to plan to build six frigates. Three of the ships were completed before hostilities died down: the USS United States, the USS Constellation, and the USS Constitution.

The start of the Quasi-War with France in 1798 led to the official creation of the Department of the Navy on April 30. The undeclared war on France involved raids on U.S. merchant vessels by French privateers and warships (which were too weak to take on British shipping).

Benjamin Stoddert, the first secretary of the Navy, played a critical role in establishing the new Navy. He secured funding for more ships, sent the Navy on attacks against the French in the Caribbean, and made sure the best officers and sailors were in the service. Stoddert also set up the first six Navy shipyards in the country.

Stoddert left office in 1801 as the Federalists were removed from power and Thomas Jefferson took over as president from John Adams. Although funding for ships was scaled back, Jefferson sent the Navy to the Mediterranean to protect American interests against the Barbary pirates in Tripoli and other areas. It fought well using the tactics adopted under Stoddert.

But in the War of 1812, the Navy was undersized compared with the British, which had the largest, finest naval forces in the world. While the Navy had several isolated, spectacular victories over the British, it couldn’t stop the empire from imposing blockade conditions.

Even worse, British forces were able to land in Washington, D.C., burning the White House and even the U.S. Navy Yard. At the war’s end, it became apparent that an active Navy was needed to protect merchant shipping, at the very least.

Since Stoddert’s appointment in 1798, there has always been a secretary of the Navy. The secretary was a member of the president’s cabinet until 1949. Currently, the secretary serves in the Defense Department.

A civilian serves as the secretary of the Navy. Currently, former Mississippi governor Ray Mabus is the secretary.

In the past, historian George Bancroft served as secretary and played a key role in establishing the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845.

Bancroft came into office about one year after the USS Princeton disaster of 1844. Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer and the former Navy secretary (and active secretary of state) Abel Upshur were killed when a gun exploded on the Princeton during a demonstration.

Secretary Gilmer had only been in office for 10 days. His predecessor, David Henshaw, escaped the Princeton tragedy because Congress didn’t approve his recess appointment by President John Tyler.

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James Monroe in 1819.

Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in Virginia, and his public career started from humble roots. He was an eyewitness to many of the events that led to the creation of the United States and the U.S. Constitution.

But you won’t hear Monroe’s name used in the same lofty terms as his friends Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and his former commander, George Washington.

Monroe did leave a lasting impression on America’s destiny because of the Monroe Doctrine, a policy he established to keep other nations out of the Western Hemisphere.

Here are 10 interesting facts about an underrated Founding Father who spent more than four decades at the center of American change.

1. Teenage James Monroe was a hero at the Battle of Trenton. The 18-year-old lieutenant was sent across the Delaware River by Washington to scout, and he nearly died after being shot during the fight in Trenton. Some have said Monroe is the soldier holding the flag in the famous “Washington Crossing the Delaware” painting, but according to Washington Crossing Historic Park, that’s unlikely to have happened in reality.

2. Monroe was a law apprentice for Thomas Jefferson. Monroe studied under the third president, but he wasn’t an outstanding lawyer. Monroe was more interested in politics in his native Virginia and served in the Continental Congress at the age of 25.

3. Monroe initially opposed the Constitution. Monroe wasn’t at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and opposed it at Virginia’s ratification convention, wanting a strong bill of rights. Monroe eventually supported the document.

4. Madison and Monroe had an unusual friendship. James Madison won the fight in Virginia over ratifying the Constitution in 1789 and then ran against Monroe for a seat in the House of Representatives. Madison and Monroe took part in a series of public debates, and Madison narrowly won the election. But the two opponents became fast friends on the campaign trail, much to the chagrin of Madison’s enemy, Patrick Henry.

5. Monroe was not friendly with George Washington. The men had a falling out after Washington sent Monroe, his former lieutenant, to France as an ambassador. Washington eventually fired Monroe after he criticized the Jay Treaty. Monroe also wasn’t fond of Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s close associate.

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6. Monroe was a key player in two presidential administrations. Monroe was a minister to France and England for President Thomas Jefferson, and he served as both secretary of state and secretary of war for President James Madison. He held virtually every key public office before becoming president in 1817.

7. Monroe was one of the most dominant presidential candidates ever. Monroe received 68 percent of the vote when he defeated Rufus King in the 1816 election. He ran unopposed in the 1820 race, getting 81 percent of the vote. Only one cranky elector in New Hampshire kept Monroe from a unanimous win in the Electoral College.

8. Monroe had some help writing the Monroe Doctrine. John Quincy Adams was a driving force behind the policy, which President Monroe introduced with his annual message to Congress in 1823. The doctrine stated that Europe needed to stay out of the affairs of new countries and territories in the Western hemisphere; in exchange, the United States would stay out of European affairs.

9. Monroe was able to buy Florida for $5 million. Monroe had started talks with Spain about Florida while he was James Madison’s secretary of state in 1815. After violence in the region and a flurry of diplomacy, Adams helped negotiate a deal for Monroe where the U.S. would pay off damage claims made by Spain during the violence. The U.S. got Florida and promised that it would recognize Spain’s sovereignty over Texas.

10.  Monroe died on the Fourth of July, too. Three Founding Fathers who were elected president died on July 4. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Monroe died on July 4, 1831. Monroe was also the last president who was never photographed in his lifetime.