Poll: Who has been the WORST President in United States History?

Who has been the WORST President in the History of the USA??

  • Franklin Pierce

    Votes: 3 1.1%

  • James Buchanan

    Votes: 7 2.5%

  • Warren Harding

    Votes: 7 2.5%

  • Calvin Coolidge

    Votes: 1 0.4%

  • Lyndon Johnson

    Votes: 10 3.6%

  • Richard Nixon

    Votes: 2 0.7%

  • Jimmy Carter

    Votes: 158 57.2%

  • Ronald Reagan

    Votes: 3 1.1%

  • William Clinton

    Votes: 33 12.0%

  • George W. Bush

    Votes: 52 18.8%
  • Total voters
    276
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Well, I was expecting somebody to take this approach. I am prepared to defend my position using the official documents and history of the Confederacy itself to prove my point.

One thing about blacks serving in the Confederacy. I hardly think a massive case of group Stockholm Syndrome is something anybody should hold up with anything approaching pride.

If my country treated me that way. As property. With my family being auctioned off like livestock at a county fair, the only thing that could cause me to take up arms in it's defense would be a few generations of brainwashing in order to convince myself that I am a second class citizen.

But I go to make my case. I'll be back. And I will only use the words of the Confederacy itself to support my claim...
 
IIRC, when South Carolina seceded, slavery was declared as the reason. And of course it was, because SC had more slaves than citizens, and although the Constitution protected SC's right to slavery, yankees were turning against this part of the Constitution. So it makes sense to me to say that SC seceded to preserve slavery ... did somebody have a point here?

I think Virginia seceded because the feds called for Virginia Militia to intervene with the Southern States' sovereignty, and Virginia then had to make a choice and chose secession. I think that is how militia was intended to be a check on the feds i.e. by keeping them State militia.

IMO, Lincoln may have been the worst, or at least it seems as though the worst trampling/subversion of the Constitution occurred on his watch ... but as bad as Lincoln was, I think the 39th Congress was worse, and the 40th worse than that.
 
That's not so. Slavery was a big issue before the war and may have been a minor issue towards secession but was not the main cause.
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I'll start with Georgia's Declaration of Secession:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/geosec.htm

Slavery is mentioned directly as the main reason for secession in the first sentence of the document. That gives slavery a position of prominence on that document as the Preamble and the 1st Amendment has in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They mentioned it first because it was first and foremost on their minds.

And they kept talking about it.

The words "slave", "slavery", or variation thereof appear over 30 times in that document, by my quick count.

Economic reasons are discussed, but all within the context of justifying slavery.

Mississippi's Declaration of Secession:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/missec.htm

They were so incensed about tariffs and economics that they don't even mention any of that stuff at all.

Nope. They just launch into a lengthy discussion of slavery starting with the second sentence of that document.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

Again, there is probably a reason why they mention slavery in the second sentence and then devote the entire rest of the document to the defense of that institution...

Texas' Declaration of Secession:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/texsec.htm

Have to hand it to the Texans. They waited until the fourth sentence in their document to mention slavery.

"She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

Slavery seemed to be first on their minds at the time. And they certainly weren't talking about it as if it were going away anytime soon.

South Carolina's:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm

Easier to read than the Texas document and certainly more scholarly and respectable...but there it is again in the first sentence of the document. That's what was on their minds.

E. S. Darghan's speech to the Alabama secession convention:
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Alabama_secession_Speech.htm

Slavery is mentioned in the third sentence. In fact, his speech touches on no other subject besides slavery.



I could go on, but nobody was really talking about import tariffs. When and if they did, it was a distant second to the major issue on their minds. Slavery.

What purpose does it serve to pretend otherwise? These are their own words, not those of "historians" living and breathing today.
 
Isn't this thread supposed to be about presidents and not slavery? I was enjoying the POTUS thread, please don't screw it up and get it locked.
 
The generational passing on of the hostility over the Civil War is, unfortunately, still a part of southern culture. One generation has passed on the next stories that the Confederacy was somehow righteous and it was 'tyranny' for the United States to quell that rebellion.

They rarely use the words slavery in this passing of information though. They speak of States rights and such but they matter was States rights to hold slaves. No. That isn't a justifiable right. That States have the right to secede. Wrong. If you declare yourself a sovereign nation (The Confederate States of America) and that you are taking the territory of another nation (The United States of America) you have done a couple things that won't be ignored. Most of all you have just stepped away from the Constitution of the United States as you are proclaiming yourself a separate sovereign nation. Good bye protection of, or rights granted to a US State, you aren't one any more. The usual arguments that the new confederacy have a foot in rights under the Constitution of a nation they have proclaimed themselves no longer a part of. You can't have it both ways.

Next, if you take the territory of another nation as your own it's naive to think they aren't going to come to take it back by force if necessary. The founding fathers rebelled with the full knowledge that the British WERE COMING and a fight was imminent.

It's sad that people are still teaching their children that the Civil War was the war of northern aggression, that Lincoln was a tyrant, that it was a assault of States rights, etc. Once they seceded they were no longer US States and it was foolish to think that the nation who's territory your claiming now as your own WOULDN'T come for it.

Ironically enough, the Constitution of the United States protects their liberty to spread such sophistry. If Lincoln had failed that protection may not exist:rolleyes:
 
Now, for those of you who picked George W. Bush as the worst. Compare his approval rating with that of the Senators whom you support.

I don't, by any means, think George W. Bush is even close to the best president in history, not even in the top 10, but he's certainly not the worst.

And at least he won with over 50% majority vote.
 
I won't go back to the very early president. There's just too much cultural disparity to make a relevant judgement of their conduct ie. people loved Andrew Jackson, but in hindsight the Trail ot Tears and his dueling history...sorta put him in another world.


Buchanan was ineffectual ie. one can make an arguement he flamed the fires that started the Civil War. He left office believing he was the last president of the United States.


Warren G. Harding was nasty ie. totally corrupt. He was a womanizer like Clinton - maybe worse than Clinton. Harding also allegedly joined the KKK while in office. Supposedly there was a somewhat whimsical ceremony in the oval office where as a kind of lark he was knighted into the Klan.


JFK had a dark side ie. the drugs, the obsessive womanizing<nobody can approach JFK's womanizing record although Clinton and Harding might have tried> JFK might have even been impeached as some of his dalliances were causing significant security breeches. JFK almost caused WW3. I know there's Camelot and he took a good stand on Civil Rights, but I think he also shook up too many hornets nests ie. Cuba and Vietnam and too many CIA intrigues.


The current Mr. Bush has been a disaster. I thought LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin shennanigans was a relic of history, but Bush proved that lies and shadow govt. are alive and well in the U.S.A. His crony bosses remind me of the ones surrounding Warren G. Harding.


Richard Nixon was a creep. He escalated Vietnam, and destabilized Cambodia. Then of course there's Watergate and all the attendant domestic spying that led up to it. His bombings of North Vietnam were senseless and rank right up there with the actions of more distant and prominent War Criminals.


LBJ really gave America a lesson in crass stupidity.


Reagan? Gorbachev ended the Cold War - not Reagan. Reagan had a touch of dementia while in office. Reagan was a popular president, but not a a good president. I stll remember his support for Al Qaeda and how he declared a day in March to be 'National Afghanistan Day' in which he praised Islamic Terrorists to be simple folks like our pioneers who just wanted to be able to practice their religion.' Yawning...
 
The point about slavery, I believe, was that secession was justified if the compact was violated, and the clearest violation, the clincher, was regarding slavery. Regardless, I don't see how any of this makes Lincoln into less of a despot.


I find the assertion that when Virginians seceded that we took away the territory of another nation to be absurd. I also find the assertion that States' rights come from the US Constitution, such that a State loses its rights when seceding, to be absurd.
 
I won't go back to the very early president. There's just too much cultural disparity to make a relevant judgement of their conduct ie. people loved Andrew Jackson, but in hindsight the Trail ot Tears and his dueling history...sorta put him in another world.


Buchanan was ineffectual ie. one can make an arguement he flamed the fires that started the Civil War. He left office believing he was the last president of the United States.


Warren G. Harding was nasty ie. totally corrupt. He was a womanizer like Clinton - maybe worse than Clinton. Harding also allegedly joined the KKK while in office. Supposedly there was a somewhat whimsical ceremony in the oval office where as a kind of lark he was knighted into the Klan.


JFK had a dark side ie. the drugs, the obsessive womanizing<nobody can approach JFK's womanizing record although Clinton and Harding might have tried> JFK might have even been impeached as some of his dalliances were causing significant security breeches. JFK almost caused WW3. I know there's Camelot and he took a good stand on Civil Rights, but I think he also shook up too many hornets nests ie. Cuba and Vietnam and too many CIA intrigues.


The current Mr. Bush has been a disaster. I thought LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin shennanigans was a relic of history, but Bush proved that lies and shadow govt. are alive and well in the U.S.A. His crony bosses remind me of the ones surrounding Warren G. Harding.


Richard Nixon was a creep. He escalated Vietnam, and destabilized Cambodia. Then of course there's Watergate and all the attendant domestic spying that led up to it. His bombings of North Vietnam were senseless and rank right up there with the actions of more distant and prominent War Criminals.


LBJ really gave America a lesson in crass stupidity.


Reagan? Gorbachev ended the Cold War - not Reagan. Reagan had a touch of dementia while in office. Reagan was a popular president, but not a a good president. I stll remember his support for Al Qaeda and how he declared a day in March to be 'National Afghanistan Day' in which he praised Islamic Terrorists to be simple folks like our pioneers who just wanted to be able to practice their religion.' Yawning...
 
Gorbachev is the only leader of an authoritarian police state I am aware of who can get credit for ending the Cold War by admitting that Reagan's policies had bankrupted his empire.

It is a curious notion, losing a struggle, yet getting the credit for ending it by having the good sense to realize the other side kicked your lily white...

Well, you get the picture.

There are statues of Reagan and streets named in his honor in Poland, where the dissolution of the Soviet Union began. That's where the cracks in the foundation appeared. Once Solidarity won the elections there, the rest of the Warsaw Pact wasn't far behind and it collapsed one country at a time.

You will not find any statues or roads in honor of Gorbachev there.

Now I suppose it is possible the Poles are suffering from some kind of historical dementia and just aren't aware they are honoring the wrong man, but I doubt it.
 
Ironically enough, the Constitution of the United States protects their liberty to spread such sophistry. If Lincoln had failed that protection may not exist
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What:eek: You are speaking of the same president who had newspaper publishers jailed because they advocated allowing the Southern states to be left alone. Lincoln was no protector of free speech.

Some of the earliest advocates of seccession were northern abolishionist. Ever read the writings of William Lloyd Garrison? He said that non-slave states should seccede from slaveholding states.

It was a strange economic situation. A majority of the federal tax revenues came from the southern states (a large portion of which involved slave labor) but most of the benefits of federal spending were in the north. Northern factories were also using raw materials produced by slave labor. How does one condemn the use of slave labor while also receiving financial benefit from it?

Bruxly, who's "territory" did Virginia take other than its own when it left the union? What about Alabama, Georgia, etc...? You would have made a very valid point if Texas took the New Mexico Territory with it, but that's not what happened.

On one hand this thread is getting away from the original topic, but then again it relates to why Lincoln may or may not be the worst president.
 
FDR. someone signed an executive order that bared massive areas of the US to some but not all CITIZENS based on their race and/or ansestry leading to AMERICANS being forcibly removed from their homes and/or imprisoned without a trial or even an accusation of a crime. this is the most dispicable thing that any president has ever done.
 
All of the FDR slamming got me thinking

My grandfather was born in 1905 and worked for Wrigley for 48 years. He worked all of those years to earn a sizable pension and treated his Social Security check as a joke, using it for going out on the town or buying stuff for the grandkids. I can't remember how many times my dad would have a new power tool for his carpentry/handyman business and when asked where he got the money, he would answer that his dad had bought it for him since he had nothing better to do with the money and he couldn't take it with him. The last time I saw him before he died, he gave me $200 as a present for making the trip. My father was born in 1935, two years after FDR took office and instituted Social Security. My dad worked from the age of 17 until 65, and he had planned for his retirement, but after discussing some financial issues with my mom, he had always factored in Social Security to provide a portion of his retirement income.

FDR created a generation that believed that the government was responsible for taking care of them in the twilight of their lives. LBJ's Great Society created a generation that believed that the government was responsible for taking care of them from cradle to grave. The demise of self-reliance caused by these two makes them rank highly on the list of worst presidents.

I still rank Wilson as the worst, though.
 
The self declared sovereign nation of the Confederate States of America was holding territory of the United States of America. The United States didn't go to war with a State, it went to war with an attempted infant nation. That nation was staking claim to territory that was the United States. A State didn't decide to become it's own nation, the leaders of those States decided to ally with a different nation. That rebellion should have fully expected the United States to come to re-claim their territory. To find that a surprise is naive on a grand scale. To go a step further and claim to still retain the rights and protections of a State in the nation you've rejected in favor of joining this new nation is preposterous.

The people that believe(d) they had a RIGHT to hold people in slavery are far more despotic then Lincoln.

What You are speaking of the same president who had newspaper publishers jailed because they advocated allowing the Southern states to be left alone. Lincoln was no protector of free speech.
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Promoting/inciting/aiding a rebellion against the United States IS a crime in case you were unaware. There are limits to what you have a right to say just so you understand.
 
The reason the Confederacy didn't have the right to succeed was the land and infrastructure was all obtained by the U.S.. If they wanted to secede, they could leave the country, but the land and infrastructure belonged to the Union. Otherwise it would have been theft by the Confederacy.
 
Bruxley, I was always raised up to believe that it was "THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA" Now you go and tell us it was actually "America" all along? While they were united they were sovereign states which agreed to be united so as to be better represented than a bunch of tiny nations...
So if it was wrong to secede from the national group it was also heinous treasonous men that STOLE territory from england... That makes me feel worse than the folks that were born of penal colony prisoners...
Brent
 
There were a number of unconstitutional things done under Lincoln's watch:

1 West Virginia should not be a state, but Lincoln pushed for it.

Art IV Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
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2 Lincoln, by executive order, freed slaves being held in the Confederate states, but not in the remainder of the Union. He erroneously gets credit for "freeing the slaves"
 
So if it was wrong to secede from the national group it was also heinous treasonous men that STOLE territory from england...
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That's right! That this is a surprise to you reflects poorly of your grip on the facts of history and the ways Nations. I'm starting to see why the confussion about the Cilil War and Lincoln exists. Whoever imparted upon you these views did you a great dis-service.

We were in a treasonous, traitorous standing with Britain. The signatories of the Declaration of Independence faced hanging and forfeture of all thier property, and they KNEW that. Stange you didn't.
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
-Ben Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence
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And the British didn't give up trying to re-claim thier territory after the Revolutionary War either. It took a LONG TIME before they stopped trying to get it back. They burned the capital in the War of 1812 remember...
 
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