Hail to the chiefs we claim as Tar Heel born

RALEIGH -- Three U.S. presidents sit sculpted in bronze on the state Capitol grounds, practically bursting out of their waistcoats with Tar Heel pride.

Chiseled in stone underneath them: "Presidents North Carolina gave the Nation."

Well, sort of.

Andrew Johnson fled Raleigh as a teenager in trouble and spent most of his life in Tennessee.

James Knox Polk's family pulled up stakes for the Volunteer State when he was about 10.

And Andrew Jackson ...

Nobody really knows. The hilly wilderness where he was born hugs the South Carolina border, and the dividing line wasn't very clear in 1767.

So on Presidents Day, the question arises: How much claim to these guys does North Carolina really have?

"It's a bit of a stretch," said William Barney, a history professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Virginia can boast a number of presidents, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Massachusetts sent John Adams, John Quincy Adams and John Kennedy to Washington.

But Johnson, Jackson and Polk all rose to office thanks to Tennessee votes. In the antebellum South, Barney said, heading west was the surest way to riches.

North Carolina saw a huge population loss in the 1820s and 1830s -- years Johnson, Jackson and Polk all experienced -- because farming declined as the result of exhausted soil.

"Most of these guys left for greater economic opportunities," Barney said. "The frontier was the place to make your name."

None kept terribly strong ties after leaving.

Polk graduated from UNC-CH with high honors, but he returned to Tennessee to study law.

Jackson never returned to the Waxhaw region where he was born. He frequently described himself as a South Carolina native, though historians guess he may have been trying to placate its hot-headed residents.

Johnson returned to Raleigh only for a grim duty after the Civil War, during his presidency, when he placed a headstone at his father's grave in City Cemetery. Jacob Johnson had died when his son was a boy, probably of pneumonia after saving several men from drowning, said Raymond Beck, state Capitol historian.

It's only one reason President Johnson probably didn't look on his Raleigh days with nostalgia. As the son of a poor single mother, he was apprenticed to a tailor. When he and other mischievous youths tossed rocks at a house, the owner threatened to report him to police. Johnson skipped town and broke his apprenticeship.

Regardless of where they ended up, Beck said, all three men started here.

The statue's intent, and North Carolina's claim, isn't so much to celebrate their accomplishments here as to recognize that each one sprang from Tar Heel roots.

"I don't know that we're stretching it," he said. "They were at least born in this state."

But stand at the statue, and you can almost hear the wind blowing in from Tennessee, whispering the rest of the story.