Gregory Dunn (Napoleon's World)

Gregory Abel Dunn (April 18th, 1838-August 14th, 1928) was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885, after assuming office following the assassination of Samuel Tilden. He was the first and final President to not have a Vice President during his term in office. Dunn is known for his involvement of the United States in the Alaskan War, his campaigns against Native Americans in the West, his establishment of a Federal Commerce Commission to oversee the burgeoning railroad industry and for helping pass the Dunn Act, which forbade states from denying naturalized or natural-born American citizens the right to vote based on any discriminatory factor, which helped guarantee the rights of black men to vote, earning him the ire of Southern landowners.

Later Life
Dunn returned to Wisconsin in 1885 and retired permanently from politics. He eventually agreed to become the President of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a post he held until 1916, when he finally retired. Dunn later commented that agreeing to be Vice President was the worst decision he ever made and that, "the notoriety that comes with the Presidency is enough to cripple a man."

When he wrote his autobiography in 1920, Dunn devoted a single chapter to his time in Washington and filled the rest of the book with lavish details of his academic career and ideas on political theory, as well as the inner workings of the University of Wisconsin. In fact, his autobiography was written as, "The Life of Gregory Dunn, President of the University of Wisconsin."

Dunn was reclusive and kept himself out of public view for much of the early 20th century, insisting that he was about as interesting of a historical as "Napoleon's foot masseuse." He wrote five works of fiction as well as a series of historical essays about the Renaissance, and was an avid researcher late into his life. He passed away in 1928 at the age of 90, at the time the oldest age ever reached by a President. Dunn was buried at a cemetary a few miles away from the University of Wisconsin.

"If you want to be a politician, then you need to get used to people not thanking you for anything and blaming you for everything." - Gregory Dunn, 1894