Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden

Andrew Johnson came from a poor family in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a child, he was apprenticed to a tailor. Johnson fled his apprenticeship and settled in Tennessee, where he married Eliza McCardle, who taught him writing and reading. The pair ran a tailor shop and enslaved two people, Sam and Dolly. It has been speculated by historians that Johnson may have been the father of Dolly’s children.

Johnson became a colonel in the Tennessee militia and was elected to Congress as a Democrat. He held pro-slavery views but presented himself as a populist. Because of his past poverty and the fact that the elites treated him with disdain, he went about “proclaiming himself a man of the people during campaign speeches and vilifying wealthy plantation owners” (139). Despite his own pro-slavery position, as a member of the US Senate, he refused to join the Confederacy. Later, when Union forces took back Tennessee from the Confederacy, Johnson was made Tennessee’s military governor. Johnson was even able to get Tennessee exempted from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in all the states that had joined the Confederacy. Through Johnson’s intervention, enslaved people in Tennessee were not immediately freed. Though he maintained racist views about white superiority, “Johnson [wa]s a political animal and kn[ew] he c[ould] no longer support slavery” (140).

When Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination, Eliza was too sick with tuberculosis to serve as the White House hostess. The informal position instead went to Johnson’s eldest daughter, Martha Peterson, who continued the renovations that Mary Todd Lincoln had begun.

Johnson was initially popular, but his popularity faded when he opposed extending voting rights to Black people and pardoned Southerners, especially plantation owners, who had fought for the Confederacy. Opposing Johnson, the Republican-dominated Congress passed “a series of sweeping measures” (142), including the 14th Amendment, to expand African American civil rights. When Southern states passed laws called the Black Codes, which restricted the freedom of formerly enslaved people, Johnson did not intervene.

Johnson was addicted to alcohol and was often drunk when giving speeches. He was the first president to be impeached by Congress. He was kept from having to leave office by one senator’s vote. During Johnson’s term, the Ku Klux Klan was founded, launching violent attacks on formerly enslaved people and on white people who taught Black children. The Republican Party refused to nominate Johnson as a presidential candidate for the 1868 election. The authors conclude that “the only positive of the Johnson administration” may be that during his administration, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million (143).

President Ulysses S. Grant was “out for blood” against the Ku Klux Klan (145). As the Klan violently attacked Black civilians, Southern officials refused to stop them. Grant ordered federal soldiers and prosecutors and suspended habeas corpus in an all-out assault “to bring the Klan to justice” (146). As part of his Reconstruction policy, Grant also worked toward passing the 15th Amendment and founded the Justice Department.

Grant was born as Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and joined the West Point Military Academy. While enlisted in the army, Grant was stationed near St. Louis, where he met his future wife, Julia Dent. He fought in the Mexican-American War as a captain. His alcohol addiction later forced him to resign from the army. He joined the Illinois militia during the Civil War and “r[ose] to become Abraham Lincoln’s top general and […] the only Union commander capable of defeating Robert E. Lee” (147).

Grant became interested in politics after going on a speaking tour with President Andrew Johnson and being “disgusted” by Johnson’s Reconstruction policy and “drunken tirades” (148). When Johnson tried to fire Grant, he entered politics and became the Republican candidate for president in 1868, even though Grant disliked politics and was a poor speaker.

Right away, Grant’s presidency was riddled with scandal. In 1869, he had gold held by the government sold with the intent to prevent speculators from dominating the gold market. This sell-off caused the price of gold to plummet, leading to the economic crash called Black Friday. Grant’s efforts to help Indigenous people were stymied by corruption, as those tasked with distributing the aid often stole it. New York City’s Custom House broke the law by leasing government-owned warehouses for large fees. In the Credit Mobilier scandal, railroad companies bribed federal administrators in order to overcharge the government. Another scandal, the Whiskey Ring, involved Grant’s secretary, Orville Babcock, and saw distillers evading taxes. An economic crisis, the Panic of 1873, also took place under Grant’s watch. Grant was an “honest man” himself, but he was accused of being “gullible” (152).

Grant’s successes included Reconstruction and advancing civil rights for Black people. He was still popular when his term as president ended in 1877. Grant wanted to run for a second term, but the Republican Party instead chose James Garfield as their candidate. After his presidency, Grant was impoverished because of a “series of bad investments” (153). To stay afloat, Grant wrote and published his memoirs with the help of the famous American author Mark Twain. Just days after finishing his book, Grant died of throat cancer.

The Grant administration established Yellowstone National Park, completed the transcontinental railroad, and accomplished “legal reforms that benefit women” (153). However, despite Grant’s attempts to improve life for Indigenous people, he failed to end the violent confrontations between the US Army and Indigenous people, with General George Custer and his troops being decimated by the Sioux in Montana.

Rutherford “Rud” Hayes ran for president in 1876 on a platform of civil rights for Black people, suffrage for women, and combating corruption in the federal government. Despite believing that he had lost, Hayes won by one electoral college vote, leading to a months-long investigation and accusations by Democrats that Hayes had benefited from fraud. In response, Hayes agreed to the Compromise of 1877, withdrawing federal soldiers from the South and promising to serve only one term in office.

Hayes, a native of Ohio, was the son of a wealthy whiskey distiller. Educated at Kenyon College and Harvard Law School, Hayes moved to Cincinnati and started a successful law practice. He became an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. Later, he was elected to Congress and became governor of Ohio, founding Ohio State University.

While he was president, Hayes’s wife, Lucy, “bec[ame] one of the most popular First Ladies in history” and was the first president’s wife to have graduated from college (157). She advocated for integration and invited Black musicians to perform in the White House. However, during Hayes’s term, Democrats took power in Southern state governments by placing legal obstacles before Black voters. In the Compromise of 1877, Hayes tried to get Southern politicians to preserve civil rights for Black citizens in exchange for withdrawing federal soldiers. However, the Compromise was soon broken, and “poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, and violence” were used throughout the South to prevent Black men from voting (158).

Democrats in Congress attempted to change federal election laws to further disenfranchise Black voters. To force through their legislation, the Democrats shut down the government by defunding the civil service and the military. After Hayes forced them to attend a special congressional session, the Democrats funded the government but proposed legislation that would bar federal soldiers from being stationed at polling stations. Hayes successfully vetoed the law twice.

The Panic of 1873 led to a strike by rail workers in 1877. When the strike led to rioting, Hayes had to send in federal soldiers. At the time, the United States was “being transformed into a new commercial society” with an economy dominated by corporations (159). Hayes “worrie[d] that the country might become a ‘government of corporations, by corporations, for corporations’” (159).

Lucy brought the “first telephone, typewriter, and phonograph” to the White House and banned alcohol, earning her the nickname “Lemonade Lucy” (160). Hayes himself was unsuccessful at defending Black civil and voting rights in Southern states. In 1881, keeping his promise not to run for a second term, Hayes returned with his family to Ohio and dedicated himself to civil rights and prison reform.

President James Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau, a former law clerk who blamed Garfield for his failure to get a diplomatic post in Paris. Garfield was the “last of the log cabin presidents” (164). Garfield himself grew up in poverty in Ohio. An avid reader whose favorite story was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), the story of a shipwrecked survivor, Garfield tried to become a sailor, but he gave up the ambition after he tried to enlist on a ship and was mocked by its captain.

Taking menial jobs, Garfield paid for his own education. Attending Hiram College, Garfield became a teacher of classical Greek. He married one of his students, Lucretia Robinson. After taking a job as the principal of Western Reserve University and then being elected to Ohio’s state senate, Garfield became a brigadier general in the Civil War. Once the war ended, Garfield was elected to Congress by 1862. Lucretia remained in Ohio, and she and Garfield rarely saw each other during the first years of their marriage. The marriage was further strained by the death of their daughter, Eliza, in infancy and Garfield’s extramarital affairs.

In the 1880 presidential election, Garfield ran against the Democratic candidate, another Civil War veteran, Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield won largely due to his support of tariffs to protect American jobs. Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, “want[ed] to be remembered for killing a president” and chose the gun he used because of how it would look in a museum (168). When Guiteau shot him, Garfield had only been president for four months. One of the surgeons trying to help Garfield, Charles Purvis, was “the first black doctor in history to treat a president of the United States” (168). Lucretia was told that Garfield would recover. However, he died from blood poisoning and an infection caused by a bullet that the doctors could not remove.

Chester A. Arthur was a man of luxurious tastes. He owned “eighty pairs of pants and w[ore] a tuxedo every time he attend[ed] a play” (171). Arthur did not want to become president and disliked the work and responsibility that came with the job. He was uncomfortable in the White House and in Washington.

Former President Hayes disapproved of Arthur, who had once been fired over allegations of corruption, lifted the ban on alcohol in the White House, and lived a luxurious lifestyle. Arthur himself had been the son of a minister in Vermont. The son of a “staunch abolitionist” (173), Arthur became a lawyer who made his fame in New York City by defending self-emancipated people and clients who had lost property in the Civil War.

At this time, Arthur became aligned with Roscoe Conkling, “the feared boss of New York’s Republican political machine” (174). At Conkling’s behest, Arthur became the collector of the Port of New York, receiving bribes that he shared with Conkling. In 1878, because of President Hayes, Arthur lost his position. Nonetheless, Garfield later made Arthur his vice president in the hope that Arthur might win him electoral votes from New York.

As soon as he became president, Arthur hired Louis C. Tiffany to oversee renovations to the White House and enlisted his sister Mary Arthur McElroy to serve as the White House hostess. Under Arthur and Mary, the “Arthur White House w[ould] gain an unmatched reputation for the finest food and wines, the best cigars, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere” (175).

Arthur’s presidency coincided with a period of rapid technological and cultural change. He marked “the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883,” had the first steel ships built for the Navy, accepted the Statue of Liberty as a gift from France, and opened “diplomatic relations with Korea” (175). Arthur’s administration saw increased violence against Chinese immigrants, who worked in mines and on the transcontinental railroad, in the Western states. Arthur vetoed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration for 20 years, but he was forced to accept another bill that reduced the period of exclusion to 10 years. One of Arthur’s signature achievements was the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which made “merit, not patronage […] the basis for federal hiring” (176). Despite achieving civil service reform, Arthur was not renominated to become the Republican candidate for the presidency.

Ten days into his candidacy as the Democratic nominee for president, a newspaper, the Buffalo Telegraph, reported that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child with a woman named Maria Halpin. This manufactured scandal was intended to diminish his chances in the election. The presidential campaign was “one of the dirtiest in history,” with Republicans using the slogan, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” against Cleveland (180). Nonetheless, Cleveland won, becoming the first Democratic president in 28 years. Because of the scandal, Cleveland married during his presidency. He married Frances Folsom, a younger woman he had known “since she was an infant” (180). She proved to be popular with the public. The Baby Ruth candy bar was named after her daughter, Ruth, and products bearing her likeness were sold.

Cleveland was the son of a Christian missionary and worked as a lawyer. His path to the presidency was “rapid” and “unlikely” (182). As president, Cleveland signed the 1887 Dawes Act into law, breaking up Indigenous reservations into small, individually owned plots. The law’s backers claimed that it would empower Indigenous people against corrupt government officials, but its real effect was to undermine the tribal structure of Indigenous societies, making it easier for settlers and railroad companies to take Indigenous property. On the positive side, Cleveland’s presidency was a time of “economic calm” (182), fueling his popularity and leading to his renomination as the Democratic candidate for the 1888 presidential election.

Between Cleveland and the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, tariffs were the central political debate. Harrison wanted high tariffs, while Cleveland wanted to lower them to “increase foreign trade” (182). While Cleveland received more popular votes, he lost the electoral college. Over the course of Cleveland’s presidency, Washington, Montana, and North and South Dakota became states.

Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of the former president, William Henry Harrison. He attended college at Miami University of Ohio and studied law. As a politician, he was known for “passionate speeches that br[ought] audiences to their feet” (185). He married a music teacher named Caroline Scott and was a brigadier general for the Union during the Civil War. Despite losing two elections for the office of governor of Indiana, Harrison became the Republican candidate for president because his “handlers ma[de] bold promises to rich men” (186).

Caroline had electric wiring installed in the White House for the first time. Fearing electrocution, the Harrisons “hire[d] a man whose only job [wa]s to turn the lights on and off” (187). Harrison and Caroline also placed the first Christmas tree in the upstairs library, “a tradition that continues to this day” (188).

Harrison delegated most of his responsibilities to Congress. Tariffs remained high, and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act raised the price of silver, leading to another economic recession, the Panic of 1893. Harrison allowed the Sioux to be massacred by the United States Army at the Battle of Wounded Knee and did not intervene when an American corporation, Dole, overthrew the monarchy in Hawaii and set up a puppet government. When Harrison ran against Grover Cleveland again, Cleveland won by a “landslide” (189).

When Grover Cleveland again became president, the American economy was still weakened by its adoption of silver as the standard for currency and by high tariffs. Cleveland refused to sign off on the annexation of Hawaii, “aware the local population [wa]s angry about being governed by corporations” (191).

Cleveland was unpopular with Congress because he vetoed 170 bills. He was also castigated for failing to keep his promise not to recognize Hawaii as an American territory. Instead of Cleveland, the Democrats nominated William McKinley as their presidential candidate for 1896. Cleveland finished his second administration as a popular president, but he “accomplished little of lasting importance” (193).