The Summer White House

The other reason why Harrison chose to spend the summer in Cape May? His primary residence, in Washington, D.C., was undergoing a four-month renovation that involved the installation of a new phenomenon called electricity. His primary residence was the White House, so the renovation was a pretty big deal.

President Harrison’s choice of accommodation was Congress Hall, taking over the entire ground floor as he and his team wrestled with some pretty important business… most particularly the tense situation in Hawaii. Harrison’s administration had applied tariffs on imported sugar from Hawaii. This upset American businessmen, who owned the sugar plantations in Hawaii, and prompted growing calls for the US to take over the islands—which of course it eventually did, several years later.

While Harrison spent much of his time at Congress Hall, his wife Caroline relaxed at a cottage in Cape May Point, which was gifted to them by the retail store pioneer (and Postmaster General) John Wanamaker. The New York Times reported on the President’s Fourth of July, saying he spent time with his grandchildren before meeting up with Wanamaker to discuss post office business. “It was scarcely a holiday,” the story read.

On July 2, 1893, Harrison, no longer president, returned to Cape May for another long visit. According to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Harrison “will pass his time the next two months with his stenographer in arranging his public and private papers and making preparations for his law lectures at the Stanford University.”

Following his arrival, said the Inquirer, Harrison passed a quiet day at his cottage — his few callers included Civil War hero Colonel Henry W. Sawyer, who built the Chalfonte Hotel in Cape May in 1876. Another visitor was Pauline Cake, wife of Congress Hall owner Jacob Cake. Harrison assured her that he would attend the Fourth of July exercises on Congress Hall’s lawn.

Harrison’s stay at Congress Hall was so impactful that it inspired the phrase Summer White House. But he wasn’t the first sitting president to lay his head on a pillow at Congress Hall. Three others had come before him.

In a newspaper advertisement announcing the 1855 season, Congress Hall’s owner Waters B. Miller wrote that the hotel boasted “a dining hall unsurpassed by any in the United States.” That year, one of the hotel’s guests was President Franklin Pierce,  a former brigadier general during the Mexican-American War. On June 29, 1855, the Baltimore Sun reported that Pierce arrived in Cape May to take part in the Fourth of July celebrations: “President Pierce and his lady arrived here this afternoon and took apartments at Congress Hall. The weather is delightful, and there is every prospect of a brilliant season.”

On Friday, July 6, the Evening Star of Washington, D.C. described the afternoon of July 4 at Congress Hall. After the Declaration of Independence was read by William Bigler, Governor of Pennsylvania, President Pierce was introduced to the crowd. “The President rose, expressed his surprise at being called upon to speak under the circumstances, spoke briefly of the American Union, its origin in the Revolution, the humble part which his ancestors had taken in securing the independence which they were celebrating; alluded to the value of the Union, the importance of preserving it, his determination to maintain it, and enforce all the laws essential to preservation, and took his seat amid general applause.”

The weather may have been delightful that day, but that wouldn’t be the best word to describe the life of the Pierce family. Indeed, Pierce is generally known as “the saddest president,” a man who battled tragedy for much of his life.

The Pierces’ first son lived just three days. Their second died of typhus at the age of four. However, the death of Benny, the youngest, was particularly shocking. Franklin, much to the disapproval of his wife Jane, had recently won the presidential election and was three months from inauguration as the nation’s 14th president. In January of 1853, the family took a train home from a family funeral in Andover, Massachusetts.

Two miles into the journey, the train derailed—Franklin grabbed Jane, but he couldn’t reach Benny, who was thrown to the other end of the carriage as the train lurched down a 15-foot embankment. The couple found their son in the rubble, dead from a devastating head injury. Already a chronically sick and desperately unhappy woman, Jane fell into a deep depression and  took to composing letters to Benny from her room upstairs in the White House.

Tragedy seemed to follow the Pierces. A grief-stricken Jane asked Abigail Fillmore, the outgoing First Lady, to replace her at Pierce’s inauguration. Fillmore did so, caught a fever the next day and succumbed to pneumonia. A couple weeks later, Pierce’s vice president, William King, died of tuberculosis.

Pierce never returned to Congress Hall, but the hotel’s reputation continued to soar. Back in those heady days of the 1850s, Congress Hall was no longer simply the pride of Cape May, America’s first seaside resort town. It was now regarded as one of the finest hotels in all of America, where the wealthy industrialists from the North would mix with the gentlemen plantation owners from the South. Pre-Civil War, Cape May was the playground of America’s elite. During that period, and including the hectic weeks following the Rebellion, “Cape May was visited by a greater number of nationally prominent Americans and distinguished foreign visitors than any other city in the country, the metropolis of New York and Washington, D.C., alone excepted,” declared A Book of Cape May, published by the Star and Wave newspaper in 1937. The perceived healing powers of sea water and the town’s incomparable beach, cooling summer breezes and world-class hotels made the town irresistible for those who could afford to make the journey in comfort.

Pierce presumably spoke highly of the hotel to his Minister for Great Britain, James Buchanan, who followed him into the White House and, subsequently, into Congress Hall’s guest book. Buchanan, who became the 15th President of the United States in 1857, stayed at Congress Hall for a few days in the summer of 1858. Buchanan, however, presumably preferred the woods to the beach—he summered each year of his presidency at what is now the Bedford Springs Resort, in western Pennsylvania, near Buchanan State Forest, which was named for him.

Buchanan, a lawyer by profession, was the only president who never married. He had been engaged to a woman once, in 1819 — but after a fight between the couple, she called off the engagement. Buchanan had a ward named Harriet Lane who served as his First Lady while he was in office.

It would be two decades before another American president would visit Congress Hall, though the much-anticipated visit, on July 13, 1875, got off to a rather inauspicious start. As the Baltimore Sun reported, a misunderstanding prevented President Ulysses S. Grant from receiving his proper salute from Congress Hall pier.

“The reception of his excellence, President Grant, was not so enthusiastic and brilliant as was due to so august a personage, from an unfortunate occurrence which, so to speak, quite took the wind out of his sails,” reported the Sun. As President Grant and “his distinguished party” were setting sail from the Navy Yard in Philadelphia at 6pm on a Saturday evening, an old government tug that had been chartered for the use of Congress Hall left at the same time, arriving in Cape May, at the hotel’s pier, just ahead of Grant’s party.

Sadly for the presidential party, and Congress Hall management, the hotel’s five-gun salute was wasted on the rather surprised occupants of the old tug who, unsure of how to respond to the salute, had the boat’s engineer respond with a blow from his steam whistle. “Suddenly the expectant crowd waiting for the return were greeted with a most unearthly steam screech, which drove half of them away, and quite disgusted all,” wrote the Sun. “As the mistake become apparent, the [presidential] cutter hove in sight, but alas, the cartridges were all out and the party robbed of its honors landed without even trumpet, drum, or fife, and came quietly to the hotel.”

This low-key arrival in Cape May was, opined the Sun, a harbinger of more to come. “It can hardly be said that General Grant is here incognito, but one really might think so, from the very little notice of him, or from the figure that he makes. He has less of that ‘majesty which doth hedge a king’ than one could or would expect from a man in a position which should be so exalted. The suit of dingy black has decidedly a slop-shop hang about it; his hat has seen better days. If any one still thinks that General Grant is going for the race for the third term, one has only to see him now to be convinced that no man was ever more thoroughly out of training. Beyond the gentlemen he brought with him, he seems to have a very small following. He excites no enthusiasm.”

During Grant’s visit he met with local councilmen—except he didn’t, according to a story reported in the Junction City Daily Union of Kansas City, Missouri. The mayor of Cape May at the time was Waters B. Miller, who was apparently not enthused by the idea of his “common councilmen” meeting President Grant. According to the paper, “They would have to abandon their boots with their pantaloons tucked inside of them, their blue shirts for boiled shirts, and old caps for high hats. Miller, knowing the opposition which would be put up by the local city fathers, picked out among his patrons at the Congress hotel nine best-dressed men to pass them off as the city council of Cape May... While Grant congratulated them upon their fine appearance, it was believed that he saw the joke, but never gave the least intimation that he was being deceived as to the resort’s government.”

After leaving office in 1877 and going on a highly praised, two-year world tour, Grant actually did try for a third term, but failed to secure the Republican nomination in 1880. In order to help pay off debts, Grant completed an acclaimed memoir (with the help of his friend Mark Twain) a month before his death at the age of 63.