Margaret Truman by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets, History of the World's Most Famous Home Page B

accepted more than a million dollars’ worth of silver trays, teapots, and the like, many of them from total strangers who simply wanted to curry favor with the president.
    The gifts were a five-star scandal at the time. They’d probably call it Silvergate today. But in spite of my misgivings about that aspect of the event, I have to concede that the Tafts’ twenty-fifth anniversary celebration ranks as the most spectacular White House party of all time.
    Since their anniversary fell in early June, the Tafts decided to have a garden party. It was to be held on the South Lawn in the evening and the guest list was to include just about everyone they had ever met. The lawn was to be decorated with hundreds of multicolored lights and paper lanterns. The illuminated White House would provide the backdrop.
    It took a team of electricians four days to cover all the trees and shrubbery in the President’s Park with lights. When they were finished, Taft requested still more lights, including spotlights to showcase the fountain on the South Lawn and the American flag on the White House roof. The flag was to be kept waving by a battery of electric fans concealed behind the chimneys. Some four thousand people attended the party and shook hands with the Tafts beneath an arch with “1886–1911” spelled out in lights.
    The U.S. Marine Band, which had been scheduled to stop playing at one A.M., continued until two on orders from the president. Before retiring for the night, Taft gave instructions for the lights to remain in place and the musicians to return the next evening. The South Lawn would be open to the public from eight to eleven P.M. so they, too, could enjoy the spectacle.
    VI
    If William Howard Taft deserves first prize for the most enchanting party ever given at the White House, Andrew Jackson deserves the booby prize for a pair of wingdings that he hosted. A frontiersman born into humble surroundings and elected by a larger popular vote than any of his predecessors, Jackson was “the People’s President” and the people descended on Washington in droves to see him sworn in.
    After taking his oath of office at the Capitol on March 4, 1829, the sixty-one-year-old chief executive rode to the White House on horseback. He had about an hour to greet his more important guests before the crowd of some twenty thousand people that had followed him from the Capitol surged past the doorkeepers and swarmed into the President’s House.
    Many of Jackson’s fans climbed on chairs or tables to get a better look at him. Others elbowed and shoved their way to the refreshment tables in the East Room. In the crush, china and crystal were smashed, fistfights broke out, and women screamed and fainted. The president finally escaped through the rear door and headed back to his hotel while the White House steward brewed up a washtub full of whiskey punch and set it on the lawn to lure the revelers outdoors.
    You might think Jackson would have learned a lesson from this debacle, but things weren’t that much better at his last public reception in 1837. One of his supporters, a dairy farmer from upstate New York, sent him a giant wheel of cheddar cheese. It was four feet across, two feet thick, and weighed fourteen hundred pounds.
    Jackson let the cheese age in the White House entrance hall for two years. He finally invited the public to enjoy it at the annual Washington’s birthday reception. The city marshal and his deputies were posted at the door to maintain order, but the crowds outwitted them. They poured across the lawn and climbed in the windows of the East Room. Two hours later, the cheese was gone and the mob with it. The floors and rugs were littered with crumbs of cheddar, and the White House reeked of cheese for weeks.
    VII
    What Andrew Jackson needed, aside from a little common sense, was the small army of military aides who later became a fixture at White House functions. During