Operation Assassination: Dying In Office Is Being Out Of Office, Permanently

We're celebrating Operation Assassination, a trivia-laden white paper I compiled 25 years ago that indirectly spawned this blog. In 2000, I combined my original paper with material I found online that I published on a GeoCities account. As part of this retrospect, I revisited what I found and republished the information.

If you thought the list of presidents dying in office was fire, then you aren't aware vice presidents died in office, too. However, there aren't many coincidences. Eight presidents have died in office, but only seven vice presidents have died while serving their term. Nearly all the vice presidents died in either November (4) or April (2). The lone exception, James S. Sherman, died within two days of November on October 30, 1912. All November deaths occurred between the 20th and the 25th of the month. As of this writing, we've also been well over a century since a vice president died in office (again, Sherman).

• #4: George Clinton (1739–1812): served for four years during the second term of Thomas Jefferson and three years and forty-seven days during the first term of James Madison.
• #5: Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814): also a vice-president to Madison, making Madison's administration the only one to suffer the death of two vice presidents.
• #13: William Rufus de Vane King (1786-1853): had the oath of office administered to him in Havana, Cuba, permitted by a special act of Congress, making him the first president or vice president to take the oath in a foreign country. Franklin Pierce's VP died six weeks later, on April 18, 1853. As the first session of the 33rd Congress was not held until December 5, 1853, King never performed any of the duties of his office and, therefore, never presided over the Senate.
• #18: Henry Wilson (1812-1875): Ulysses S. Grant's vice president died November 22, 1875.
• #21: Thomas Andrews Hendricks (1819–1885): Grover Cleveland's vice president died on November 25, 1885.
• #24: Garret Augustus Hobart (1844–1899): William McKinley's vice president died on November 21, 1899.
• #27: James Schoolcraft Sherman (1855–1912): New York's Sherman was elected to serve as vice president with William Howard Taft. In June 1912, the Republicans renominated him for a second term, but he died six days before the election. The eight electoral votes that would have been cast for him had he lived were transferred to Nicholas Murray Butler, nominated by the Republican National Committee. Sherman was the seventh and most recent vice president to have died in office.