The White House Welcomes its First President

John Adams arrived in Washington, D.C., on November 1, 1800, becoming the first president to occupy the unfinished Executive Mansion, later known as the White House. The capital had only recently relocated from Philadelphia, and the city itself 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, and offered the president incomplete staircases and rooms still echoing with the sounds of laborers. Abigail Adams, who joined him weeks later, famously 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 thus become a lame-duck president. His tenure in the mansion would be brief, and he departed on the eve of Jefferson’s inauguration in March 1801.

In the waning months of his presidency, Adams slept in a sparse bedroom, and the family dined amid unpacked crates. Despite the discomfort, Adams saw the residence as 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.” This benediction was later carved into a mantel in the State Dining Room.

Adams’s short stay marked 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 the Adamses 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 John Adams by David McCullough.

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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 aimed at mending fences within the Democratic Party ahead of the 1964 election. As the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out; Kennedy was struck in the neck and head, slumping into his wife Jacqueline’s lap. Texas Governor John Connally, seated in front of the president, was also wounded but 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, with Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her bloodstained pink suit, standing 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, fueling immediate speculation about a broader conspiracy. The assassination profoundly shocked the nation and the world, ushering in 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 no definitive proof of conspiracy. The event cemented Kennedy’s mythic status and inspired countless books and films.

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

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.