What we say:

Calvin Coolidge, a laconic conservative and former governor of Massachusetts, called for limited government, an isolationist foreign policy, tax cuts, and reduced spending. He signed restrictive immigration laws, decreased income tax rates, and vetoed farm relief bills. Coolidge was popular and served during a time of economic prosperity.

Though immensely popular at the time of his presidency, Coolidge’s reputation suffers when linked to the Great Depression. His refusal to act during a Midwestern bank failure, coupled with his inaction to aid the agricultural sector and the growing disparity between rich and poor are seen as paving the ground for the eventual collapse of the stock market and spread of the depression throughout the entire country.

The ‘Roaring Twenties’ and Coolidge are inexorably linked. Coolidge’s support of business allowed the American economy to boom, which impacted and was impacted by the cultural, social, and artistic explosion of the same decade. Coolidge, however, was out of office for less than eight months before the Wall Street collapse occurred, and though Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the Depression, under Coolidge the stage for the collapse was set.

What we say: James Garfield, a former senator from Ohio, sought to unite party factions with a balanced cabinet.  He was assassinated two months into his term.

James Abram Garfield’s largest accomplishment was his decision to choose Chester Arthur as his vice president, who would go on to sponsor civil-service reform.  Given his short term, Garfield did get a nominee appointed to the Supreme Court.  The in-fighting within the Republican Party during Garfield’s election was revealed in Garfield’s cabinet’s nominees and in his assassination – his assassin reportedly screamed his support for the Republican faction opposed to Garfield.

While working on the next set of prints, we wanted to take time out of our day to offer a fantastic deal for the holidays, (known in consumer talk as “Black Friday”).  Buy any print Friday, November 26^th through Monday, November 29^th and get 20% off.

We’re starting to ramp up a bunch of specials for the holidays, but this is one of the best. Check out the promotions page often – we will post new deals there, and let you know how long everything will be running.

Also, if you’re a student looking to purchase for your dorm room or as a gift for your parents – or if you spent time slaving away on a campaign, check out the promotions page because we now offer student and campaign worker discounts of 10% to any print.

Friday-Monday.  20% off.  Just use the code BF111, and get your SmartArt for the holidays.

Millard Fillmore: 13^th President, 1850-1853

What we say: “Millard Fillmore, a New York Whig, took office after Taylor’s death.  Fillmore supported the Compromise of 1850, but its Fugitive Slave Act cost him northern Whig support and the nomination.”

Millard Fillmore was nominated to be Zachary Taylor’s Vice President on the basis of his anti-slavery views.  Upon Taylor’s death, and Fillmore’s ascension to President, slavery issues consumed much of Fillmore’s time.

He supported the Compromise of 1850, working to pass it and believing it to be in the interest of the Union it was passed.  Both pro- and anti-slavery factions disliked portions of the bill, such as the refusal guarantee slavery in the southwest and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and instead of receiving credit, Fillmore faced grumbling anger.

Fillmore’s other accomplishments were to send Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan, though Perry did not ‘open’ Japan until Pierce took office, and to initiate the White House library.  His two-star ranking comes because of his work to keep the status quo in effect with slavery.  The compromise of 1850 averted the question of slavery, but it came no closer to solving the question.  Fillmore is a good symbol of an era of Presidents who were incapable of solving the issue.

The final president in this low tier is Herbert Hoover.

Calvin Coolidge’s decision not to run for a second full term left Hoover the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in his party. In the election of 1928, Hoover was the first Republican to pioneer a “southern strategy,” and attacked Democratic candidate Al Smith on his Catholicism and his position in favor of the repeal of Prohibition.

Hoover is most often remembered as the president who presided over the start of  the Great Depression, but he did not cause the Great Depression, nor did he fail to act in response to Black Tuesday. He ranks among the worst presidents today because his actions in fact led a worsening of the Depression.

Hoover did fear too much government involvement, but by all accounts, two major pieces of legislation passed in response to the stock market crash – the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Davis-Bacon Act – were largely policy failures. Attacking Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which had immense popularity across the nation, Hoover was soundly defeated by Roosevelt in 1932.

The legacy of Andrew Johnson has run the gamut from excellent to abominable. In the early twentieth century, the Republican Party of the 1860s was seen as beholden to business. In that light, Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, was viewed as a “man of the people” and held in high esteem. A century later — by the 1960s — he was reviled as a president with southern sympathies who held back the civil rights movement.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Johnson was the only Southerner in Congress to remain loyal to the Union, and seems to have held the continuation of the Union as his highest priority in his work toward rapid North-South reconciliation after the war. To this end, he staked out a centrist path and kept his distance from the Radical Republicans. This move, however measured, inevitably placed him ideologically closer to the former Southern opposition than Northerners would have preferred.

President Johnson’s most marked failure was his lack of action in addressing the social and economic status of recently-freed slaves: it took significant effort from the Republican Congress, without much help from Johnson’s administration, to pass the Freedman’s Bureau and other laws.

This 1867 Harper's Weekly illustration, "The Georgetown Election," mocks President Johnson's (left) stance in opposition to suffrage for freed slaves.

Johnson did oversee the purchase of Alaska and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and forced the French out of Mexico (where France was attempting to establish a satellite state and exploit the nation’s resources). France’s withdrawal ended the reign of Maximillian I of Mexico, the Austrian archduke installed by France.

Even considering these foreign policy accomplishments, Johnson’s failure of domestic post-war leadership and his disregard for civil rights places him squarely in our bottom tier of presidents.

For what it’s worth, the Congress at the time agreed — there were two formal efforts to impeach President Johnson: the first, in 1867, failed to pass the House; the second, in 1868, passed the House but failed (by a single vote) to receive the required two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Considered a “doughface,” or a Northerner with Southern sympathies, James Buchanan is widely considered the worst U.S. president. The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision was delivered by the Court in the first days of Buchanan’s presidency, and Buchanan was widely believed to have influenced the decision.

Buchanan’s administration spiraled downhill from his first day in office. Capitalizing on Buchanan’s lack of leadership on slavery and expansion, an energized Republican party seized control of Congress in the mid-term elections and blocked much of Buchanan’s weak proposals. During the Panic of 1857, he initiated the sale of Treasury revenue bonds and managed to enrage both Democrats and Republicans.

Most significantly, President Buchanan ignored the growing secessionist movement. Even after Abraham Lincoln’s controversial election, as Southern states announced their intention to secede from the Union, Buchanan nervously demurred taking action in the hopes that the crisis would resolve itself.

In its profile of James Buchanan, U.S. News & World Reports writes,

“To his dying day, he felt that history would treat him favorably for having performed his constitutional duty. He was wrong.”

Buchanan’s presidency serves as an example of the dangers of ignoring growing public discontent and frustration with the federal government. The Civil War, which broke out just a few months after Buchanan left office, would end up destroying a generation of young American men (and women), and dividing the nation for decades — if not centuries — to come.

William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren Harding each received one-star ratings on A Visual History of the American Presidency. Harrison, really, deserves an incomplete — he only served thirty-two days in office.

The other three men who fall into our one-star category are slightly more interesting. President Franklin Pierce, for example, filled his cabinet with political rivals,  and to this day remains the only administration not to see any change in the cabinet during his tenure. He suffered from a seeming lack of willpower, however, when it came to the expansion of slavery.

Pierce stated in his inauguration that his administration “will not be deterred by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion.” Pierce continually temporized, refusing to cool the passions aroused by the Compromise of 1850 or the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Posts on Buchanan — the president everyone loves to hate — and Harding will follow shortly.