Presidential visits to Scott County

There have been three sitting Presidents of the United States who have visited Scott County through the years: Warren G. Harding in 1921, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, and Ronald Reagan in 1982. But there have been four other presidents who have visited Scott County either before or after their time in the White House, and Reagan himself visited before he was president. The others to visit were Andrew Johnson (twice), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden.

This is a look at American presidents who visited Scott County, before, during or after their terms in office, in chronological order.

1861: Andrew Johnson

Perhaps the most famous — and consequential — visit by an American president to Scott County was Andrew Johnson in June 1861.

Johnson was the senior U.S. Senator from Tennessee at the time. Despite being a slaveowner and a Democrat, Johnson was fiercely opposed to secession. He wasn’t opposed to slavery; in an 1859 address to the Senate, he warned northern abolitionists that their efforts to outlaw slavery would endanger the Union and said that the “all men are created equal” line from the Declaration of Independence did not apply to black people.

Nevertheless, Johnson was adamant in his insistence that the Union should not be fractured. In a separate speech to the Senate shortly after the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Johnson said: “I will not give up on this government … No; I intend to stand by it … and I invite every man who is a patriot to rally around the altar of our common country and swear by our God and all that is sacred and holy that the Constitution shall be saved, and the Union preserved.”

When Tennessee Gov. Isham Harris called a referendum to secede from the Union in 1861, Johnson left Washington and returned to Tennessee. He campaigned against secession across East Tennessee.

It was on June 4, 1861 that Johnson visited Scott County. He stayed the night at a house on Black Creek near Robbins, and then was joined at the county courthouse in Huntsville the following day by U.S. Rep. Horace Maynard, where he delivered a fiery speech on the courthouse steps.

We don’t have a record of what Johnson said that day, but Scott Countians responded by voting against secession by the largest margin of any county in the state. The handwritten note that Sheriff Bailey Buttram carried to Nashville via horseback reflected that the vote was 541-19 against secession.

Johnson was later appointed military governor of Tennessee by President Lincoln in 1863, after the Union seized control of Nashville from the Confederacy, and was Lincoln’s running mate in the 1864 presidential election. Just months after winning a second term, Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson was elevated from vice president to the presidency, becoming America’s 17th president. He was also the first president to be impeached (he was narrowly acquitted by the Senate, by a single vote). Historians widely view his presidency as one of the worst in the nation’s history.

1872: Andrew Johnson

It was in 1872 that Andrew Johnson — by now a former President of the United States — returned to Scott County. He had been elected vice president in 1864, ascended to the presidency in April 1865 after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, impeached by Congress, and defeated by New York Gov. Horatio Seymour in the 1868 Democrat primary campaign at the party’s national convention.

Johnson’s political legacy was complicated. He owned 10 slaves and opposed equal rights for black people, but in 1863 freed his slaves and hired them as paid servants. As military governor, he declared freedom for all slaves in Tennessee (the Volunteer State was not part of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation because it was under Union control by then). His nomination for vice president in 1864 caused Lincoln to declare, “Andy Johnson, I believe, is a good man.” But, a few months later, Lincoln watched sadly as a drunken Johnson stumbled through his swearing in. Johnson had opposed secession, but as president he also opposed the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, threw up roadblocks to Reconstruction, and vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He supported the prosecution of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but later granted amnesty to Davis and other Confederate leaders. When Union war hero Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868, he refused to ride in the same carriage as Johnson, and Johnson refused to go to Grant’s inauguration.

Despite his fall from grace, Johnson made the decision to return to politics. He remained immensely popular in Tennessee, and decided to attempt a return to the U.S. Senate. He was narrowly defeated in 1869, but then ran as an independent in a special election for an at-large congressional seat in 1872, where he was defeated by his old ally, Horace Maynard. He finally won a seat in the Senate in 1875, and to this day is the only former American president to serve in the Senate. He died of a stroke shortly thereafter.

It was in 1872, as he campaigned unsuccessfully for the at-large congressional seat, that Johnson returned to Huntsville. He gave a speech about loyalty and patriotism and how Scott County had sided with the Union during the war. Historian H. Clay Smith wrote that Johnson told his audience that he had spoken with Lincoln about Scott Countians during the war, and had told the president how loyal the people of Tennessee were to the Union.

In the audience that day was Nat Hancock, a former slave who spent the rest of his life in Scott County after emancipation. Johnson addressed him specifically. He started by reading from a poster that said, “I will keep at all times a good stock of negroes all from selected stock consisting of good field hands, blacksmiths, drivers of stock and generally any type of help wanted. Also a good trade of trusted mammies and young and old season cooks, seamstresses and granny women.” Johnson then turned to Hancock and said, “Mr. Hancock, you will never know the dread of such notices again.”

1921: Warren G. Harding

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding visited Oneida by rail. The exact date of his visit is unknown. In fact, all that is known about this particular visit comes from an old photograph preserved by the Tennessee State Library & Archives. The photo shows President Harding and others on the back of a train at the Oneida depot, with a crowd gathered around as Harding speaks.

Harding was elected 29th President of the United States in 1920, nominated by the Republican Party following the unexpected death of Theodore Roosevelt in 1919. Tennessee was the only state he won in the South. He proved to be one of the most popular presidents in American history, though his reputation was posthumously tarnished by the revelations of scandals and an extramarital affair. He died of a heart attack in 1923, at the age of 57.

1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected 32nd President of the United States in 1932, and is the only president to serve four terms in office, largely thanks to the Great Depression.

Roosevelt had been James M. Cox’s running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1920, but Cox lost to Republican Warren G. Harding. Twelve years later, with America struggling to recover from the stock market crash of 1929 and the paralyzing economic recession that followed, Roosevelt — then governor of New York — defeated President Herbert Hoover in a landslide.

In 1933, Roosevelt began implementing his New Deal, a series of policies designed to provide relief to struggling Americans and help the nation recover from the economic hardships.

Roosevelt was fond of traveling the nation by train to pitch the New Deal to voters. In 1936, he traveled the Southern Railroad south, making a stop at the Oneida depot. Little was written about that stop, but it is remembered that thousands turned out at the depot to see FDR, who would soon win re-election to a second term by an even greater landslide than in 1932, capturing 48 of 50 states.

1976: Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was perhaps best known as an actor when he first visited Scott County in May 1976. He had served eight years as California’s governor, and was seeking the Republican nomination for president in 1976, opposing incumbent President Gerald Ford.

Reagan visited Scott High School in Huntsville, where a large number of dignitaries attracted a crowd of approximately 1,800 people. U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., a native Scott Countian was there, as was U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Sr., also a native Scott Countian. U.S. Sen. Bill Brock, who had defeated Albert Gore Sr. in the 1970 election, was also there.

Reagan won a large number of states in the 1976 primary and nearly defeated Ford. But he did not win Tennessee.

Ironically, his visit to Scott County proved costly. During that visit, he suggested that the Tennessee Valley Authority be privatized and sold. His comments dominated headlines in the Knoxville News Sentinel for two days, and he lost considerable support among voters in the Volunteer State.

Four days after Reagan’s visit, Tennesseans voted, and Ford narrowly defeated Reagan. An article in the News Sentinel stated: “As recently as a week ago, Reagan seemed to have the edge over Ford. But that was before he committed a political blunder by lashing out at the Tennessee Valley Authority.”

While Ford won the nomination, he was left weakened by his bitter primary campaign battle with Reagan, and lost the general election to Democrat Jimmy Carter — but that, in turn, set up things to come.

1982: Ronald Reagan

In May 1982, six years to the month after he first visited Scott County, Reagan returned to Huntsville. This time, though, he was President of the United States, becoming just the second sitting American president to ever visit Scott County.

While Carter had won the presidential election of 1976, the economy had turned sour, and Reagan won in a landslide in 1980. That year, Reagan defeated Scott County’s own Howard H. Baker Jr. and others in the Republican primary.

Baker, who was at the time the U.S. Senate Minority Leader, had become a star in the Republican Party. He rose to prominence after famously asking during the Senate’s investigation of President Richard Nixon, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” He had hoped to be Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976, but was passed over for Bob Dole after he revealed that his wife, Joy, had struggled with alcohol abuse — though she was by that time sober and recovering.

After quickly dropping out of the 1980 primary race despite polling second at the time, Baker was again passed over as a running mate, perhaps because of his unpopular support for the 1978 Panama Canal Treaties. Reagan chose George H.W. Bush instead.

But if there was any sort of rift between the president and Baker, it was quickly mended. In 1982, Baker was the U.S. Senate Majority Leader when Reagan visited Knoxville for the opening ceremonies of the Worlds Fair. After attending the opening of the U.S. Pavilion at the fair, Reagan and Baker took the president’s Marine One helicopter from Knoxville to Huntsville, landing on Baker’s lawn.

President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, stayed at the Baker Guest House for one night — and that bedroom was thereafter referred to as “The Reagan Room.” They attended worship service with Sen. Baker and his wife, Joy, at Huntsville First Presbyterian Church, as well.

Reagan later asked Baker to serve as his White House Chief of Staff during a tumultuous time at the White House in 1987. “When the president asked me to serve, I was glad to do it,” Baker later said, though doing so may have cost him a chance to run for president again in 1988. Baker was credited with repairing relations between the White House and Congress. He did not run for president in 1988, and was largely out of the national spotlight until 2001, when he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Japan by President George W. Bush.

1993: George H.W. Bush

On April 24, 1993, Joy Dirksen Baker died of cancer at the age of 64. A funeral service was held at First Presbyterian Church of Huntsville. A large number of dignitaries attended, including former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara.

Bush had been selected instead of Baker as President Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1980, and served as vice president from 1981 to 1989. He was elected the 41st President of the United States in November 1988, defeating Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in a landslide.

In his 1992 re-election bid, Bush was defeated by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

It was three months after Bush left office in 1993 that Joy Baker died. Her husband, former U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., had served as White House Chief of Staff during Bush’s latter years as vice president. The two men had first squared off in the 1980 Republican primary, a race that ultimately went to Reagan.

1997: Jimmy Carter

In 1997, former President Jimmy Carter visited Scott County as part of the Carter Work Project’s “Hammering in the Hills” event. The effort helped Habitat for Humanity — the cause that Carter championed in his post-presidency years — to build 50 homes in one week, and he visited each town that had a build site.

Carter won election as the 39th President of the United States in 1976, as governor of Georgia. He defeated Republican incumbent Gerald Ford — in no small part because of the primary battle that had been waged against Ford by former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Carter served a single, tumultuous term as president, and was defeated by Reagan in 1980 by an almost unprecedented margin.

In 1982, Carter founded the Carter Center, a non-profit that was organized for the purpose of advancing human rights and alleviating human suffering.

The $7.75 million Hammering in the Hills event was the brainchild of Lyle Hanna, with Kentucky Habitat for Humanity, who envisioned Carter — who was a carpenter and had first volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in 1984 — helping to build 50 homes in a week in Kentucky’s poverty-stricken Appalachian region.

In 1997, Hammering in the Hills began, building homes in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. It was the start of an annual week-long Carter Work Project, which has built more than 4,000 houses.

The event included 10 homes along the Scott-Morgan county line near Rugby. Carter visited briefly on Tuesday, June 17, 1997.

2014: Joe Biden

Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. died on June 26, 2014 from complications of a stroke, at age 88. He died at his home in Huntsville with his wife, Nancy, by his side.

A funeral service was held Tuesday, July 1, 2014 at First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville. A number of dignitaries were on hand for the memorial service, including then-Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Al Gore Jr.

Gore served as vice president under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001 and was the Democrat candidate for president in 2000, when he was narrowly defeated by President George W. Bush.

Biden was a long-time member of the U.S. Senate from Delaware who served as vice president under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. He was elected 46th President of the United States in November 2020, defeating incumbent Donald J. Trump. He withdrew from consideration in the 2024 election, amid growing concerns over his health. He was replaced on the ticket by his vice president, Kamala Harris, who was defeated by Trump.